


Gone In A Flash

by Kitty Eden (TheBigCat)



Category: Ruby Redfort Series - Lauren Child
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Disappearances, Embedded Images, Gen, Mystery, Original Characters - Freeform, bad things happening to good people, longfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-01-20 01:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 47,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12422655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBigCat/pseuds/Kitty%20Eden
Summary: Where is Ruby Redfort- every smart kid's smart kid?One thing's for sure - she's definitely not where she should be.If Ruby was here right now, Hitch's job would be a whole lot easier, her best friend might not be panicking, and the Count might even have been found by now. Not to mention the small manner of whatever secret LB's been hiding this whole time...Well, there's no use crying over spilt milk. The clock is ticking, and it might not be long until Ruby's time is up - permanently.





	1. Taken

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that has been in the works for several months, possibly longer if you count my brainstorming sessions that I never actually saved onto the computer. Although, honestly, I first started working on the idea after reading Pick Your Poison for the first time. Which means, of course, that this story is pretty massively AU from the end of that book. Be warned, this will not follow canon very closely at all.
> 
> Really quickly, I'd like to thank the following people:
> 
> R for letting me bounce all of the initial ideas off her even though she doesn't know this fandom, helping me with architecture research, and generally prodding me when I wasn't getting writing done. Annie, who also has no idea what this fandom is, but made suitably encouraging and excited noises when she saw my wordcount and told me that I was probably doing a good job so I should keep going. And of course, my amazing beta, [goldstarsforall](www.goldstarsforall.tumblr.com) on Tumblr, who put up with a great deal of things when I asked her to help me edit this - including but not limited to: me dumping two-thirds of the story on top of her in less than an hour, some really ridiculous spelling mistakes, my complete lack of knowledge of how tea actually works, and my unfortunate habit of double-dashing. And she helped me pull this all together from a second draft to what you see before you today, so! Behold.
> 
> I'm gonna post another short prologue-like chapter tomorrow, and then updates will be on Mondays and Fridays until it's all over.
> 
> I really hope you enjoy this! :D I poured most of my soul into it and I'm definitely not gettin' that back anytime soon.
> 
> \- Kitty
> 
> EDIT: check out the [dustjacket mockup I made for this thing!!](https://agentredfort.tumblr.com/post/166569703190/coming-soon-and-by-soon-i-mean-im-gonna-post-the) k thanks bye

The girl's parents didn't notice that she was missing until it was far too late.

The kidnapping in itself had been quite sudden. It was a simple snatch, with the kidnapper plucking the child – who couldn't have been more than a few years old – from her stroller when her mother's back was turned. Nobody paid the would-be snatcher any attention at all as they walked out of the shopping centre with a soundly sleeping baby cradled in their arms like she was always meant to be there.

Almost exactly five minutes after the actual kidnapping took place, the child's mother tore herself away from the display of exotic dresses in the shop window that she had been looking at, and noticed that her daughter was nowhere to be seen. Within a matter of seconds, the alarm had been raised and the shopping centre was placed on lockdown. This, of course, did absolutely nothing to stop the kidnapper and their steal – both of whom had vacated the premises long before it would have done any good.

The girl's mother was hysterical – screaming and sobbing – not even the calming words of her husband could distract her from the fact that her daughter was gone – gone, and she would perhaps never see her ever again.

After searching the shopping centre top-to-bottom, the police turned their attention to the rest of the town, without success. Initially, it appeared that the child had become yet another sad statistic – the victim of a child predator or trafficker who had chosen her for some depressingly arbitrary reason. Even after a single day of searching, the police seemed to have fallen into the mindset that it was inevitable, that they would never find her and she might never be heard from again. And that probably would have been true, if it weren't for another child – only slightly older than the missing girl – who had been playing out the front of the mansion that served as his home, and had decided to explore in the bushes nearby. It was in those bushes that the boy found the girl – smudges of dirt on her face and arms, her short hair dishevelled and maybe slightly hungry too, but ultimately, perfectly fine.

The two of them, content to play and murmur to each other in some incomprehensible language, were discovered a short while later by the boy's father, who proceeded to contact the local police. The police in turn contacted the previously-missing girl's family, and it was with much relief and happiness that she was reunited with her family – although the child was so young that she had absolutely no idea what all the fuss had been about.

It was concluded that she must have simply wriggled out of her stroller when nobody was looking, and somehow had managed to make her way halfway across town. Her parents didn't question this twist of fate too closely, simply glad to have their daughter back with them again. Nobody would ever know that she had, in fact, escaped from her captors, rather than a simple stroller- although it was through a rather extraordinary series of never-to-be-documented coincidences that she had actually managed that at all.

Nevertheless, the girl's parents kept such a close eye on her from that point on that the would-be kidnapper never got a chance to try again.

The girl, of course, remembered nothing of this- not that her parents would have ever reminded her.


	2. An Ordinary Kid

 

When Ruby was thirteen and three quarters, she was standing in her bedroom with a slowly rotting apple in one hand and a penknife in the other, and the apple had been sliced cleanly in two. Although she had cut her finger on the sharp blade, she barely seemed to notice the blood trickling down the back of her hand and down onto the carpet. Instead, her attention was focused on the small folded piece of paper that had been inexplicably tucked into the open space in the core of the apple.

She reached out with the hand holding the penknife, and with hand that were shaking much less than they should have been, unfolded the paper.

On it, there were printed two tiny letters, and they were the letters that would change everything. Ruby had never really understood the phrase 'your blood running cold' before, but as she processed the letters that were there in front of her, she could have sworn that her blood momentarily turned to solid ice.

 **L.B.,** said the message at the centre of the rotting apple, and that was the moment that everything shifted.

Ruby knew about the Butterfly Effect, of course, like any intelligent, well-read girl would – the concept of small causes having large, often unpredictable effects – but if you had asked her at that exact point in time what it had to do with her current situation, she wouldn't have had an answer for you. More likely, she wouldn't have had a single clue what you were talking about.

But whatever Ruby did or didn't know, something had changed that day. Maybe it was because of something beyond her control, or maybe it was due to something as simple as the blood currently trickling down her hand, but from that moment on; things would not go quite as she – or anybody else – would have expected.

There would be no trip to the Prism Vault, no conspiracy over the Mars Mushrooms, and maybe these and so many other things had never even existed in the first place.

Ruby, of course, had no knowledge of the change that had just happened, but a thought suddenly occurred to her, singular and clear.

 _Nothing's going to be the same ever again,_ she thought – and although there was no way that she could have known it, she was absolutely right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time, we get into some proper good story updates. See you on Monday, y'all


	3. Chapter One: Friday (1)

The wind and rain whipped through the open window and through the second-story bedroom of the umpteenth time that evening, sending paper and furniture flying and crashing everywhere. The door to the room banged open in the gale, slammed shut just as quickly, and then proceeded to do it again, this time crushing a stray page from a torn-apart book in the process. 

Winter was cruel to the inhabitants of Twinford, and this year was definitely no exception to that. The gale that was wrecking the bedroom on the second floor of the Green-wood House was currently being experienced by the whole of Twinford. It was so intense that it could easily be classified as a hurricane; hands-down the most destructive storm that the town had been witness to in at least a decade.

On the streets outside of the house, bins that had been set out for rubbish collection later that morning banged and clashed together as they fell over themselves like dominoes, scattering bags of trash down the street. Some of them split open and by the time that the storm died down, the storm would be completely covered in rotten fruit skin, egg shells, and plastic wrappers – not a pleasant sight, even on the best of days. 

Inside the bedroom, the sheets were blown off the bed from where they had been neatly folded at the foot of the mattress, as if the usual occupant had intended to return later on to make it up properly. The disturbed sheets knocked over a stack of books, and were summarily plastered against a wall by a particularly forceful gust of wind and a quick spray of rain that might have actually been hail. One of the books in an overturned stack flipped open, pages rustling past each other, and tumbled end-over-end to join the sheet where they were stuck to the wall by wind pressure. The book hit that wall with a  _ crack  _ that would have made a librarian wince.

The doorknob of the single exit to the room turned, and for a moment the door creaked and groaned before giving way and opening, albeit reluctantly and with far more effort than was probably required.

“Kid, you awake up here? It sound like you’re throwing some sorta party – emphasis on the  _ throwing _ part –”

The person attempting to enter the room immediately hit a problem in doing so in the form of several rain-soaked sheets that almost seemed to have a life of their own. It took him a few minutes to untangle himself from the mass of fabric. After doing so, he gathered them up in his arms, quickly tossed them out into the hallway to deal with later, and then crossed to the open window, closing it and latching it shut. The storm raged on, still as furious as before, but no longer able to get inside the house.

Hitch, the Redfort’s house manager and unofficially named butler – who just so happened to work part-to-full time as a field agent for one of the world’s most clandestine secret organizations – surveyed the bedroom, which now resembled as close as you could realistically get to ground zero after a nuclear explosion. He took in the piles of books, now dispersed carelessly across the floor; the walls – irregularly splattered with rain, leaves and dirt – and the desk, of which all but one of its piles of notes were scattered to every corner of the room and beyond – the remaining pile having been saved from the same windy fate by a conveniently  placed butterfly paperweight. One of the bookshelves that had previously lined the walls had been catastrophically toppled over, and now presented an ideal picture of exactly how  _ not  _ to arrange your furniture.

Finally, Hitch’s gaze travelled to the bed, which - quite apart from having been ignobly stripped of its sheets and blankets by the wind – was conspicuously absent of its usual occupant, who by his time should have been under the covers, fast asleep and dreaming.

He didn’t move for a long moment, and then he crossed over to the intercom button mounted on the wall, clicking the ‘whole house’ button down. “Hey, kid. Looks like your room got trashed a bit; you left a window open. And come find me when you’ve got time - I got some things you might find interesting.”

He took his thumb off of the intercom. There was no immediate response, but that didn’t been that Ruby wasn’t going to get back to him eventually – it was entirely possible that she was busy with something around the house and wasn’t able to reach an intercom at the moment. He waited for a minute or so, just in case, and then began the process of tidying the fallen books and scraps of paper into neat piles that weren’t safety hazards to anybody hoping to navigate the room. He sorted everything into two piles –  **_things that were probably relevant to whatever Ruby was doing at the moment_ ** and  **_things that weren’t._ **

He knew that Ruby probably wouldn’t be thrilled about the fact that he was going through all of her things, but figured that if she was  _ that  _ worried about them, then she shouldn’t have left the window in the first place for all of them to get wrecked in the storm. A bit blunt, sure, but –

– he stopped and frowned at the bed, realized that it appeared unslept in, possibly for at least a day. Slightly strange, but it wasn’t completely unreasonable to assume that she hadn’t gone to stay at a friend’s house while he, her parents and Mrs Digby had all gone off on their own respective parts of the world.

He propped the fallen bookshelf back upright with a small grunt, then straightened the pile of  **_RELEVANT ITEMS_ ** , placed them on top of Ruby’s sheetless mattress, and headed downstairs to check for any notes that Ruby might have left behind before leaving the house.

On the way into the kitchen, he passed the answering machine, where the number  **_2_ ** was blinking bright red. He hit  **_play_ ** without looking, and went to examine the fridge as the recorded voice of Sabina Redfort filled the room with a long, rambling message that mostly covered how much fun she and her husband were having in Canada, and, paradoxically, how much they were missing Ruby, and how much they were looking forward to getting back to Twinford.

There were many things pinned to the refrigerator – including several expired coupons for the new restaurant on Hamilton Drive, and a long-forgotten note from Ruby’s homeroom teacher informing the parents of the recipient of how an immediate parent-teacher interview was probably necessary for the mental wellbeing and sanity of all concerned – but a message from Ruby Redfort was not one of them.

“See you when we get back!” Sabina’s message concluded, and the answering machine beeped once before playing the next message – shorter than the previous one, and considerably more to-the-point. 

“Hey, Rube – you’re not answering your phone, so I figured I might as well try this one,” Clancy Crew said. Static crackled in the background of the message, and there was the faint noise of what sounded like somebody tapping anxiously on a nearby wall. “It looks like it might get rainy later, so I was wondering if we were still on for that movie tonight. My place, in case you forgot.” A slight pause, more tapping. “Okay, that’s it – see you later, I hope.”

Hitch frowned, reached over to the answering machine, and hit  **_play_ ** again before fast-forwarding through Sabina’s phone call. He listened to Clancy’s message again, this time noting down on a scrap of paper the Morse Code that he had been tapping out between his words.

**•- •-• • / -•– –- ••- / –- -•- •- -•-**

, he wrote, and then read it over, quickly translating it in his head. He reached for the phone immediately upon deciphering it, and consulted a list of numbers tacked neatly to the wall before dialing.

“ _ Crew residence! _ ” declared a cheerful, youthful voice several seconds after the call connected. “How-can-I-help-you!” It came out in a chaotic spill of words, as if the person on the other end had memorized them just before picking up, and was trying to recite them all as quick as she could manage before she forgot the order they came in.

“This is the Redfort’s house manager,” said Hitch. “Could I speak to Clancy Crew?”

There was a distant crash in the background, and Hitch heard somebody scream hysterically in the distance. The sound was faint enough that it might have just been a television, but there were other voices accompanying it that didn’t sound as if they were coming from a programme – a worried sort of murmur that crackled and hissed in the silent moments of the phone call.

“You’re the butler!” said the girl on the other end of the line, apparently delighted. “You’re like some kinda secret agent, aren’t’cha? You’ve got the car and the sunglasses and I betcha you’ve got a gun–”

“I think you must have got me mixed up with somebody else,” said Hitch, frowning at this.

“Aw, really?” She didn’t seem convinced. 

“Yes, really – is Clancy there?”

“ _ Nahh _ ,” she said, dragging the word out. “It’s just me. Olive. His sister. Dad told me to get the phone, since ev’ryone else is busy.”

“Is everything all right over there?” he asked, curious despite himself. “Not to pry, but it sounds like–”

“The roof’s just cavin’ in,” Olive dismissed easily, “and they said I was too little t’help. So.”

“Ah,” said Hitch after a brief moment of contemplation. Apparently the storm had been busy affecting more than just Ruby’s room and the contents thereof. Hitch had arrived back in Twinford from his interstate assignment just in time to catch the middle part of the storm hitting the town, full-force. It hadn’t been pleasant driving through the gale back to the Green-Wood House, and he could only imagine how much worse it might be without any protection from the elements – especially, say, if your roof happened to be caving in at eight in the morning. “Say – Ruby wouldn’t happen to be over at your house, would she?”

“Ruby?” Olive made an exaggerated  _ hm _ noise. “Haven’t seen her since she came over that one time last week. Why would she even  _ be _ here?”

Hitch paused, wondering if he should tell her to tell Clancy about Ruby’s mysterious absence, but ultimately decided against it. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to panic him for what could be no reason. “Ah, nevermind. Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s what people say when there’s somethin’  _ to _ worry about,” said Olive, clearly suspicious.”

“Ruby said she might head over to your place,” Hitch said, making up a quick lie. “The storm hit just after she left, though. She’s probably at one of her other friends’ houses.”

“Huh,” said Olive contemplatively, over the distant roar of Ambassador Crew directing his family on how best to prop up a support strut. “I’ll tell Clancy. Thanks, Mr Spy-Butler guy!”

Before he could say anything, she hung up, leaving only a dial tone and an empty phone line behind.

Hitch replaced the phone back on its hook, and leaned back against the kitchen counter, fiddling with his watch. He pressed a few buttons, setting it to ‘locate’ – a setting that he had been using more and more frequently since Ruby was recruited to Spectrum – and tried to locate the Escape Watch.

Almost immediately, the screen lit up green, and informed him that the Bradley Baker Escape Watch was located very near in his vicinity. In fact, Hitch realized as he zoomed in on the tiny map that was displayed on his screen – it could be found in the very same house he was currently standing in. 

He set it to direct him, and followed the arrow that scrolled on the display upstairs, at first feeling a sense of relief, which quickly shifted to moderate dread as it led him into Ruby’s room. It took him a moment or so to hunt it down, but –

The Escape Watch was tucked neatly into the gap between the mattress itself and the slats making up Ruby’s bed-frame. It was quite intentionally done, too – there was no possible way it could have slipped into there by accident. 

Hitch sat down on the bed, dropped the Escape Watch into his lap, and brought up every Ruby-tracking device he could think of.

The bike locator – attached to Ruby bike (of course) which was parked in the back garden of the house – not that riding into the middle of a storm would be a good idea to begin with.

The fly barrette – offline, which could mean any number of things, from being simply out of power to having been smashed into millions of pieces. A quick check revealed its last known location to be inside Ruby’s room as well, which was of absolutely no help whatsoever.

The sliding tile puzzle – hadn’t been used at all recently. The last known message was the word ‘YELL’ that Ruby had sent a couple of days before his departure, as a way of letting him know that LB was done with debriefing her. There was no constant tracker on the puzzle, either. The only way it would send any sort of signal was if you formed a coherent word with its tiles.

Even the locator that Hitch could have sworn Ruby knew nothing about – a pea-sized microchip tacked to the bottom of her usual pair of sneakers – wasn’t anywhere near her. It, too, had been discarded almost carelessly underneath her bed, and had ended up fallen into a crack between the floorboards. He had to prise it out with his fingernails, and when he examined it closely, it appeared to have been burned off with some sort of laser. Melted rubber had congealed on one side, and it was partly blackened, although still mostly functional

Hitch wracked his brain, but couldn’t think of any other ways that he might be able to track down Ruby. All avenues of investigation had so far been dried out, and at this point it was a very real possibility that she had been taken by some malicious, unknown force. People didn’t just  _ vanish,  _ and it was highly unlikely that she had gone for a walk in the middle of the night, or even the early morning – not when there was what could be easily described as the most intense storm in nearly a century raging on outside.

He flicked through some options on his watch; opened the ‘call’ section of the device, and hesitated briefly over a couple of names before coming to a decision. With his index finger, he selected the name ‘L.B.’ and waited for his boss to pick up. 

There was a muffled whine from the hallway outside, and Hitch sat up straighter, frowning, even as the call began to connect.

The furry snout of Bug, the Redfort family dog and Ruby’s near-eternal companion poked around the side of the doorframe. The dog look as dejected as it was possible for a husky to ever get – the poor animal’s ears were practically drooping. Just as the call connected properly, Hitch realized something.

“ _ Yes? _ ” said the testy, gravelly voice of his boss, sounding distinctly a if she had just woken up from a long nap cut tragically short. 

Hitch hesitated again, uncharacteristically uncertain. “Wrong number, sorry,” he said eventually. “I meant to call Lillian.”

LB made a noise of vague annoyance, although no malice seemed to be intended. “Right. Good to hear you’re back, by the way.”

“I’m not so sure I’m happy to be,” Hitch said, meaning it on many different levels.

“Mm, the weather is quite bracing today, isn’t it?” It seemed that the head of Spectrum 8 was in a flippant mood this morning – she sounded almost amused, despite the early hour. “It’s playing havoc with our communications. You’re lucky the call got through – the power keeps going out.”

“Seems like it,” Hitch agreed. “You know what – I should call Agent Lillian while I have the chance. Who knows when the power will cut out again?”

“Do that, then,” said LB. “And stop by when you have the chance, will you? You need to be debriefed.”

“Got it.” With that, Hitch hung up, hoping that Agent Lillian, wherever they actually were, didn’t talk to LB about him anytime soon. He dismissed that thought quickly and instead knelt down to Bug’s level, reaching out to scratch the dog behind the ears.

“Do you know where Ruby is?” he asked softly. “Do you?”

Bug barked once.

Hitch, unfortunately, did not have ‘able to speak dog’ on the list of his many talents, but he sincerely hoped this was a good sign.

Bug turned and lumbered his way down the stairs, Hitch following every step of the way. Ruby and the large husky had always seemed to have some sort of strange, supernatural connection as long as he had known her. It bordered on the unnatural sometimes – both girl and dog frequently appeared to know exactly what the other was thinking.

Bug stopped and turned as the two of them reached the front door, and looked expectantly up to Hitch, who only paused for a split second before grabbing his coat from the umbrella stand and slipping it on. He pushed open the front door, and almost immediately the wind and rain began to rush into the relative warmth of the house, chilling the air instantly.

He crouched down next to Bug, who hadn’t moved since arriving at the door. “Find Ruby,” he said, stressing the words and letting a bit of desperation – just a bit – leak into his voice. He had never been very good with animals, and dogs were not the exception to this. At this point, he couldn’t do anything but wish that this wasn’t the case.

Bug just stared at him with huge, confused eyes.

“Find Ruby,” he repeated. “Ruby – your owner? Find her. Find Ruby. Do you know where she is?”

Bug whined, high and despairing. He walked in circles several times, sat down next to the open door, then lay down on the ground with his paws tucked over his eyes. He whined again, softer this time. Maybe it was due to the rain and wind, or maybe he just didn’t know where to look, but one thing was for sure – Bug was not going to find Ruby for Hitch.

Hitch closed, the door, removed his coat, and swore under his breath. It wasn’t Bug’s fault, obviously, but he couldn’t help but feel some resentment towards the dog for this small betrayal.

The phone rang.

Hitch ignored it for all of three seconds, before deciding that it probably would be a better idea not to do that, and crossed the room to pick it up.

“Rube?” asked Clancy Crew, sounding almost painfully hopeful.

“No,” said Hitch, “sorry to disappoint.”

There was a long silence.

“Olive told me you called,” Clancy muttered eventually. “I guess – you’re back, then? Is Ruby there too?”

Hitch rubbed his thumb and index finger together, trying to figure out how to communicate the situation without revealing any important information directly over the phone. “No. But – I got your message from earlier. The one meant for her. She isn’t around to respond at the moment, but if she  _ were _ here to, I think she’d say  _ no. _ ”

“You think she’d say –-” Clancy was obviously trying to work out what this meant. “–no? To my message, you mean the one I tapped out –  _ oh. _ Oh  _ no, _ oh jeez, oh gosh, you’re not saying –”

“I’m not saying  _ anything, _ ” Hitch said hurriedly, cutting over him before he could say anything important over the phone – who knew who might be listening in? “Now right  _ now,  _ if you get my meaning.”

“Right,” he said. “Yeah. I get it.” There was a brief pause. There was no longer any screaming or crashing in the background – it seemed that the roof-caving situation at the Crew household had been resolved, if only temporarily. “You think – would this have anything to do with our, uh, mutual friend?”

“That depends entirely on which  _ friend _ you mean, kid,” said Hitch carefully.

“We haven’t seen him for a while, you know,” Clancy blurted, sounding unsure. “He likes old movies – very dramatic.” He was clearly unsure of how obvious he was being. “Goes by the name of ‘the C’-”

“Stop,” Hitch said sharply – Clancy fell silent, and Hitch thought quickly, very quickly. If anybody  _ was  _ listening in, either from Spectrum or otherwise, it had already been made abundantly clear by both of them what they were actually talking about. At this point, the best they could hope for was that Spectrum was too busy dealing with the communications fallout to be tapping the phone lines of the house, and that whoever had taken Ruby simply didn’t  _ care. _ “I know who you mean .And to be honest – that is looking more and more like a real possibility at the moment.”

Clancy released a short breath of air. “Oh –  _ great. _ I was hoping she was just – I don’t know. Researching. Being Ruby. But...”

He trailed off. Hitch frowned. “Kid, what do you know?”

Another long silence – this time, long enough that Hitch began to wonder if the phone lines had gone dead.

“Listen, if you know something, you’ve gotta tell me. It could be important, real important –”

“You sure it’s safe to talk?” Clancy interrupted. “You know, over the phone...?”

“We should be fine,” said Hitch, even though he still wasn’t sure. “Talk. Now.”

“Sure,” said Clancy. “Okay, so – Ruby and I leave notes for each other at a kinda, kind of, drop point, right? Even when we can’t talk in person and everything, we can usually communicate through notes. Coded notes.”

Hitch could imagine the boy pacing nervously back and forth, hands fluttering anxiously. It wasn’t hard to. Clancy’s hands usually fluttered whenever he was talking. “Right,” he said, more to prompt him along than anything else. He hadn’t known about any sort of drop point, but the system didn’t seem out of character for the two friends.

“Right. I hadn’t seen Ruby in a while – this started just about when you left for wherever you went when you went away – she just kinda vanished off the map, you know? Except I still  _ saw  _ her occasionally, in the window of her room and stuff, and she answered my calls, but it was all kinda vague. I figured she needed her space after – well, you know – so I didn’t press it, but she had stopped leaving notes at the spot so I was also kinda worried.

Hitch nodded, even though Clancy couldn’t see him doing so.

“Yesterday morning, I checked the drop – I hadn’t been for a few days – and she had left a note, folded into a dragon.”

Hitch sensed that the ‘dragon’ part wasn’t nearly as important as the actual content of the note, and said as much. “What did it say?”

“‘Gone to the source of the problem’,” Clancy recited in an empty voice. It sounded as if he had inadvertently memorized the message after reading it over and over, far too many times. “‘I can fix everything. Please don’t worry about me. Love, Ruby.’”

Hitch sucked in a startled, vaguely horrified breath of air through his front teeth. “...oh,” was all he could manage.

“Yeah,” agreed Clancy. “And when I went over to her house, it was empty. She’s not at anybody else’s place, either; I couldn’t find her at any of the regular spots – I didn’t know what to do. I  _ still  _ don’t know what to do.”

“Listen, kid,” said Hitch, feeling a cold wave of panic creep over him as he realized something, “please don’t freak out when I tell you this, but – there is a  _ very high  _ chance of our ‘mutual friend’ being back in Twinford, as of at least a week ago.”

Silence.

“You freaking out?” Hitch asked after a few seconds of crackling phone static, which no sign of Clancy preparing to respond.

“A bit,” Clancy’s voice was small and slightly breathy, “I can deal. You think that he might have – that Ruby might have ...”

“Honestly, I’m not sure what to think.” Hitch sighed; leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. His clothes were still soaked through, not having had a chance to change out of them since braving the rainstorm on his way into the house. “Listen, I – I’ll head over to my workplace in a bit, when the storm dies down. We can send a search party out, or...”

“You don’t know where she is,” Clancy interjected, breathiness suddenly gone from his tone. “Or if she really  _ did  _ go by herself – she might have been kidnapped again!”

“There’s nothing else we  _ can  _ do,” Hitch pointed out. “Unless you want to go out into the rain tonight to look for her yourself!”

“I  _ will,  _ if that’s what it takes!”

Hitch felt a sudden surge of annoyance, but quickly forced himself to take a mental step back, take a breath, and recognize that, ultimately, he was talking to a  _ child.  _ A child who had attained more maturity and loyalty than most people his age ever would, but a child nonetheless. He sighed. “Okay, look ,don’t do that.  _ Please  _ don’t do that. I’ll go to Spectrum as soon as I can. I  _ swear _ , we’ll find her. There’s isn’t a power on this Earth that can stop Spectrum if we put our minds to it.”

“Except the Count,” Clancy countered.

“Spectrum trumps everything, Ruby trumps Count,” Hitch said. “Ruby is a part of Spectrum, therefore–” he abandoned this slightly nonsensical train of thought. “–look, just have a little bit of faith before you do anything rash. That’s all I’m asking.  _ Please,  _ kid.”

There was a long silence, and then – “Okay.”

“You  _ sure  _ you got that,” Hitch said, brow furrowing, “because I got enough on my plate at the moment, and I really do not want to have to rescue  _ two  _ kids in over their heads.”

“You get condescending when you’re scared,” said Clancy quietly. “I pointed that out to Ruby last week. She – she agrees with me.”

For once, Hitch had nothing to say to this.

“It’s okay; you’re right,” Clancy said after a second. “I’ll just put, just. Just find her, okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” Hitch promised.

Clancy laughed hollowly. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for, huh?”

And with that, he hung up – and at almost exactly the same moment, a crackle of lightning lit up the sky through the front window of the house. This was swiftly followed by the ominous rumble of thunder. The lights in the kitchen flickered, and for a brief moment Hitch was standing in a dark, empty house with a dead telephone receiver in his hand. He could honestly say at that very moment he had never felt quite so isolated.


	4. Chapter Two: Friday (2)

Hitch headed down to his apartment, Bug trailing a few paces back the whole way and eventually settling himself just outside the door to wait for his return. Once inside, he swept the room for monitoring devices, out of habit than anything else, really , and took a very brief shower.

Afterwards, feeling moderately better, he left the apartment, and went to search the kitchen for wherever Ruby kept the dog food, so her husky would stop following him around everywhere. Bug nudged him in the right direction, and after a quick hunt for a pair of scissors to open the package, Bug was happily munching on his belated breakfast, and Hitch was free to consider his options.

It looked as if it would take a while for the storm to fully clear up, or at least for it to be safe to drive outside. Maybe an hour or two. Sure, it would be easy for him to contact Spectrum and arrange a search party – a lot of people at Spectrum were very fond of Ruby, and some of them were in fairly high positions in their respective chains of command. They would be more than willing to help. But...

Hitch couldn’t help but feel there was something vital he was missing. It just didn’t make  _ sense. _ The Count, as unpredictable and terrifying as he was, still usually had a reason for doing most of what he did. Kidnapping Ruby with no trace of warning whatsoever just didn’t fit his style, and nobody else on Spectrum’s wanted list had been confirmed to be in the vicinity recently. And then there was the matter of Ruby’s cryptic note-  _ gone to the source of the problem, I can fix everything. _ It didn’t explain anything at  _ all,  _ and wasn’t even vaguely reassuring. Why would Ruby leave a note like that?

His mind flashed back to the pile of **_relevant things_** that he had made after shutting the window in Ruby’s room, and he considered something for a moment. Clancy had said that Ruby had been working on something in her room prior to her disappearance. It was a bit of a long shot, but – what _if_ –?

He took the stairs, two at a time, up to Ruby’s room. Bug watched curiously from his breakfast, but didn’t follow along. 

The pile of books and notepaper that he had previously deemed relevant were on Ruby’s bed, right where he had left them. He seated himself on the mattress, next to the headboard, and began to go through them. 

On the top of the pile were an assortment of photos that hadn’t been swallowed up by the storm and/or the vortex of mess that seemed to be the room’s constant state of being. Hitch spread them out on the floor, and allowed himself a quick, fond glance at them, before returning to the information that would prove more helpful. He had only put them in this pile because of how much Ruby seemed to like, and because the others that she usually kept tacked with these to her pinboard seemed to have been ruined beyond repair in the storm.

There were several books on experimental computer coding, by a variety of authors. Scraps of newspaper served as makeshift bookmarks in all of them – random pieces that seemed to be all inserted at chapters about something called ‘parity bit coding’. Hitch opened one of them to the first instance of a newspaper bookmark, and skimmed through it.

_ Parity adds a single bit that indicates whether the number of ones (bit-positions with values of one) in the preceding data was even or odd. If an odd number of bits is changed in transmission, the message will change parity and the error can be detected at this point- however, the bit that changed may have been the parity bit itself. The most common convention is that a parity value of one indicates that there is an odd number of ones in the data, and a parity value of zero indicates that there is an even number of ones. If the number of bits changed is even, the check bit will be valid and the error will not be detected. _

The book then went on to describe various formulas and algorithms used to generate parity sequences, and that was about the point where Hitch stopped following along. He had absolutely no idea how the kid managed to fathom any of this. He flipped through the rest of the books. They were no less incomprehensible in tone. One thing was for sure: Ruby seemed to be  _ very  _ interested in parity bits.

The next genre of books that featured prominently were on architecture and structural engineering. Unhelpfully, these volumes didn’t contain bookmarks of any type – not even a dog-eared page to indicate what part of them Ruby had been reading when she last left off. 

He rifled through the rest of the pile, but anything left wasn’t as helpful or useful as he had previously thought it to be. There were the usual – crime thrillers and whodunnits, comics that had been leafed through so often that their pages were soft and wrinkled, an introductory textbook to mathematics that had never been so much as looked at - presumably because Ruby knew it all already. 

He stood up, shuffling everything back into its semi-neat pile, and crossed to Ruby’s desk, ignoring the faint squeak of the floorboards beneath his feet. He sat down at the desk and lifted the butterfly paperweight off the small stack of sheets. Upon a quick glance through them, it became apparent that these were, if possible, even more unhelpful. The notes and doodles that Ruby had made here were the inane sort of thing you might do upon hitting a creative block and attempting to pass the time until getting over it. Random scribbles, like somebody testing a new pen, covered one page. One page featured a makeshift Mystic Rose geometric pattern done without a ruler, and the one after that contained unflattering cartoonish caricatures of Miles Froghorn.

He went through everything twice, concluded that there were no hidden codes contained within the impressively convoluted design for a Rube Goldberg-esque machine that would pour banana milk for the user without them having to get out of bed, and then leaned back in his chair, irritated despite himself. This had been a complete waste of time. He had learned nothing apart from the fact that Ruby might possibly be interested in pursuing a career in computer programming andor structural engineering. 

Hitch pushed the chair back, and strode across the room towards the door, intending to leave. He stopped when he heard the floorboards under the carpet squeak slightly, and frowned. He shifted his weight subtly, hearing it squeak again. The Green-wood House was very well constructed – there was absolutely no reason why there should be any loose floorboards, unless...

He kneeled down and lifted up the carpet, revealing dusty wooden floorboards underneath. A quick examination revealed a certain set of them that weren’t so much loose as intentionally separated from the rest of the floor around them. He considered this for a moment, and then dug his fingers into the crack running around the separation, lifting them up. It came up with barely any resistance, and he pushed it aside, eyes already fixed on the somewhat surprising sight of hundreds of yellow notebooks within the hidden compartment. They almost glowed in the enclosed space – stacked neatly into piles, each one labelled in the top right-hand corner with a tiny number. He drew in a quick, startled breath – whatever he had been expecting to find upon stumbling across a hidden compartment in Ruby’s room, it certainly hadn’t been  _ this. _

On top of all of them, seeming somewhat out of place amongst the sea of yellow, was a battered pink notebook that looked far older than the others around it. On front, in block capitals, were printed the words ‘ **RUBY’S RULES** ’.

He looked at all of this for a very long time, and then leaned down to take the pink uppermost notebook, deciding to start with that one first. Flipping open to the front page, he began to read.

**RULE 1:** Ruby’s familiar handwriting said, and Hitch automatically said out loud, “Keep it zipped,” – a reflex response to a phrase that had been repeated so often to him that it had pretty much ingrained itself into his brain. He paused and frowned at himself. Shaking his head, he read the first line again.

**RULE 1:** **_You can never be completely sure what might happen next._ **

He smiled at this; it was one of the most Ruby-ish things he had read in his life. It sounded exactly like something she would keep as one of her life mottos.

He kept reading.

As it turned out, there were 80 of  **RUBY’S RULES** in total – ranging from the oddly specific – such as  **RULE 80:** **_Don’t stand on a window ledge if you aren’t completely sure if it opens outwards or inwards_ ** – to the ones that were very broad and yet even Hitch felt like he should be noting them down somewhere –  **RULE 20:** **_90% of survival is believing you will survive._ **

It made for interesting reading, but ultimately didn’t seem to contain anything other than the rules. Hitch set it aside, and moved onto the rest of the notebooks. He hesitated over them for a second, trying to figure out where to start. Finally he settled on a recent-looking one (notebook #612) and flipped it open.

It quickly became apparent that Ruby was a lot more observant than he ever gave her credit for- and that really was saying something, considering just how much credit he usually gave her. The notebooks were a virtual treasure trove of every single thing that went on around town, whether the events in question were completely meaningless or vitally important. Everything that happened around Twinford in Ruby’s presence had been meticulously noted down and recorded. It was impressive, and, more than that, it felt very intensely  _ private. _

Hitch recalled a book he had read once in which an aspiring girl spy had done much the same as Ruby – noted down everything of consequence that happened around her. This hadn’t ended well for the girl in the book- people who find out that they’ve had their most private moments spied on and catalogued by a pre-teen tend to react badly. He could very well see why Ruby wouldn’t have mentioned her hobby to anyone. 

For a moment, he considered leaving them all alone, before remembering Ruby’s own casual disregard for other people’s privacy. He sighed, shrugged, and carried on, this time starting from the very beginning.  _ Do unto others, and all that. _

The earlier notebooks seemed mostly full of inconsequential, inane notes – although it could be noted that Ruby’s handwriting improved greatly over time, going from a childlike scribble to her notably neater writing of the present. He skimmed through most of these quickly.

It was at notebook #623 that things began to get interesting. Instances of Spectrum’s influence began to show up, slowly at first –  _ we have a new house manager. I don’t trust him, he’s up to something  _ – and then a full section of pages, completely dedicated to solving the initial Spectrum entrance code. From there, the secret organisation showed up almost as often as anything else, filling pages in-between the casual, everyday observations. Key words were often underlined and connected to other pages with stark red lines, and some pages were entirely taken up by brainstorms for riddles and puzzles that were now already solved. The Jade Buddha conundrum came first, followed by the Sea Whisperer incident, and it was at about this point that there 623rd notebook ended and then next one picked up.

Notebook #624 was easily the most interesting of all. At first, the facts that were most related to Spectrum were ones that Hitch was already aware of- the Cyan Wolf and the scented paper code, the sky thief and dot calling cards, the lemonade cipher and the Count.

It was the notes directly after that final encounter with the Count that got Hitch’s attention, making him sit up straight almost immediately, and lean in closer to the page.

_ Wednesday evening. _ _ The Count’s apple started rotting, so I cut it open. LB’s name was inside. No prizes for guessing what this means. The only question is-  _ **_is he right?_ **

_ Thursday morning _ _. I’ve thought it over. There’s a chance that he could be lying: he is the Count after all, there’s no way I can trust him. But I don’t know why even the Count would claim that LB killed Bradley Baker- _

At this, Hitch made an audible noise of shock, momentarily losing his place. He scanned the page again, trying to pick up where he had left off.

_ I don’t know why even the Count would claim that LB killed Bradley Baker, unless it’s to try to get me to turn against Spectrum somehow. _

There were a few lines of menial observations for the next few pages, detailing Mrs Beesman’s exploits with her multitude of cats, and blackmail notes on some of the teachers at the local middle school. After that, it noted that this was the point where Hitch, Mrs Digby, and Ruby’s parents had all left at various times of the day to their respective destinations, which he of course knew about already. Hitch scanned impatiently through these, until he got to something that looked slightly more promising.

_ Thursday afternoon _ _. He could be lying for any  _ _ number _ _ of reasons, there’s no point in assuming that I know what the Count’s up to. On the other hand, he could be telling the truth. Why would he do that? _

**THINGS I KNOW,** said the next page, the words underlined several times.

_ The Australian is working for the Count.  _ __  
_ The Count is working for someone. _ __  
_ The Count has betrayed this someone. _ __  
_ This someone has a grand plan. _ __  
_ This someone wants to kill me. _ __  
_ Lorelei wants to kill me. _ _  
_ __ That LB might have killed Bradley Baker.

**THINGS I DON’T KNOW,** said the page opposite.

_ WHY to all of the above. _ _  
_ _ If I can trust LB anymore. _

The next few pages were covered in sketches of grids in various formations, all with dots on them in seemingly random placings. Between them was what looked like some kind of letter substitution code that consisted completely of 0s and 1s.

A: 01000001   
B: 01000010   
C: 01000011   
D: 01000100   
E: 01000101

It continued on for the rest of the alphabet. Hitch puzzled over these for a while, before giving up and moving on. Gone were the pages of notes on tiny details in the neighbourhood, all that was left was days and short, terse notes. It didn’t even seem like Ruby was writing the notebooks anymore.

_ Saturday afternoon. _ _ I got in. I wish I hadn’t. _

_ LB’s been lying to us. _

This last line made Hitch pause once more, and he rested the notebook in his lap for a moment, thinking. The kid seemed pretty dead-set on the idea of LB having killed Bradley Baker – which was completely ridiculous, of course. Hitch had known both LB and Baker back before the plane accident had happened, and the two of them had been almost sickeningly in love. The idea of LB flipping out somehow, killing Bradley for any reason at all, wasn’t just wrong, it was completely  _ laughable. _ And yet...

Disregarding the most recent incident with Blacker, Ruby’s instincts had been proven time and time again to be sound and accurate, although her methods were often more than a little questionable. By the sound of it, it seemed as if she had done something that fell under the category of ‘questionable’  _ again _ to prove that the Count had been right. And probably had ended up getting the answer she had been looking for, like it or not.

He noticed quickly that she had never explicitly stated whether LB had killed Baker or not- just that she had been ‘lying’ about something, which could be anything.

A thought hit him, causing him to furrow his brow briefly.

_ Could Bradley Baker still be alive? _

The next page was another list, this time untitled.

_ Sunday Morning _

**\- Heat** ****  
**\- Thermal-based** ****  
**\- Altitude?** ****  
**\- Molecular spacing (check architecture books)** **  
** **\- Cogan**

This was all there was, and it went all the way down to the bottom of the page, and when he went to turn to the next, he realized that there was no space left in Notebook #624. It almost seemed as if she had been in the middle of writing the list when she, too, had recognized that and had gone on to spill into a different, blank notebook.

He scanned the uppermost layer of notebooks, certain that there had to be more to Ruby’s notes, but didn’t spot any notebook that had #625 marked on it, even when he took out each individual notebook and checked them one by one. It took him upwards of fifteen minute to make sure that every one of them from 1-624 was there, but it was obvious any other notebook that there might have been was glaringly, conspicuously missing.

He checked the desk, the bookshelves, and went over every square inch of the floor for more hidden compartments (of which there were none) and eventually admitted defeat when he realized that he was checking the original compartment for the third time with no progress being made at all.

“Damn it, kid,” he muttered, placing all of the notebooks except #624 back underneath the floorboards and pulling the cover back into place. He rolled the carpet out again, covering the wooden floor again, making it appear as if nothing was there. “Why do you always need to make things so  _ difficult _ ?”

He tucked the notebook into his inner jacket pocket, and glanced outside, taking stock of the weather. It looked as if the storm was beginning to settle- it was still windy and raining, but nowhere near as hard as before. It looked safe enough to drive in. Safe enough that he could make it to the nearest Spectrum entrance, anyway.

He headed downstairs, took his coat from where he had left it on the stand, and left the house.


	5. Chapter Three: Friday (3)

The nearest entrance to Spectrum 8 had been installed while Hitch was in New Jersey, and was located just behind Penny Books – just a few blocks away from the Redfort residence. There were next to no cars on the road as Hitch drove over. He parked his car across the street from the second-hand bookstore, which had been closed, probably due to the weather. He got out, and crossed the street, leaning into the wind and keeping his head down against it.

Around the back of Penny Books was a rusted old water tap that lacked a handle with which to turn, and even if it did have a handle, it gave the distinct impression that it would be too old to produce any clean, drinkable water, if any water at all.

Hitch dug around in his pockets for a few seconds, and produced a handle piece that fit perfectly into the top of the tap. He turned it clockwise three times, the mechanism working smoothly, and gears within the wall clicked and creaked for a few seconds. Part of the wall slid back to reveal a ladder stretching downwards into a vertical tunnel.

Hitch removed the handle piece, tucked it into his pocket, and slid himself into the tunnel. As he begun the climb downwards, the wall slid back into place behind him, leaving no sign that he was ever there.

He arrived in the middle of Spectrum, where only a few agents were milling around- most of them looking slightly frazzled and windswept. Buzz, as usual, was manning her post in the centre of the room, cocooned in a nest of phones like the world’s oddest spider. She gave him a slight nod of acknowledgement as he approached her desk.

“Is Blacker in?” he asked.

“Should be,” she said, and added, into the green phone tucked between her shoulder and ear, “ _comiendo moscas, no es un problema._ I saw him come in half an hour ago,” she continued, apparently carrying two conversations at once quite easily. “He should be in Violet 223, unless he moved – _no, no, no hay tiempo. Por qué?_ ”

“Thanks,” said Hitch as Buzz listened for a second. Another phone rang – the navy-blue one further from where she was currently.

“ _Luego,_ ” she said tersely into the green phone, and slammed it down, immediately reaching directly for the one that was now ringing. She snatched it up, and started talking Latin, which Hitch could probably have translated himself if he hadn’t already been on his way to the Violet section of rooms, located to the west of the central point of Spectrum Eight he had emerged into.

It was a length walk, and Ruby might have been interested in watching the walls fade from grey to blue to purple if she had actually been there. Hitch, having been this way many times before, was only interested in getting to his destination as fast as he could.

As he passed the darker purple sets of rooms, which mostly consisted of laboratories and testing rooms, a woman stepped out into the hallway, taking her lab goggles off as she did so. She glanced up as he approached, and brightened. “Oh, Hitch! Hi – you’re just who I was looking for!”

Her name badge read ‘SJ’, although it was faintly smudged. A corner of it appeared to be burnt slightly.

“Am I?” Hitch asked, faintly surprised – although he knew SJ (by reputation mostly), the chemistry department of Spectrum didn’t often get involved in the line of work he was usually busy in.

“Well, indirectly.” SJ grinned; brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “It was Ruby I was looking for – you know Ruby, Redfort, right, I think you work together?”

“You could say that,” said Hitch, amused despite himself. SJ knew full well that he was on Ruby’s protection detail. “What did you need the kid for?”

“She asked me to check some mystery compound; run a few tests. Structural integrity, you know – I think it’s for whatever code LB has her working on. Anyway, the lab got the results back this morning, and I thought she might want to know. I haven’t seen her around for a few days. But hey,” and here she frowned. “I thought you were off in New Jersey?”

Hitch looked at the envelope that SJ was now offering to him. “I got back this morning.” He took the envelope, and tucked it into his jacket, next to Ruby’s notebook. “I’ll get it to her when I see her. She’s probably still sleeping in. You know how kids are.”

SJ gave him a double thumbs-up. “Well, thanks! Tell her she’s welcome in the lab anytime.”

“I’ll be sure to,” Hitch said, and the two of them continued down the hallways, each moving in separate directions.

The indigo-purple faded smoothly into violet after only a few minutes, and Hitch found himself at Room 223, labelled with a handwritten ‘ROOM IS IN USE!’ sign.

He knocked.

“Oh, for the love of – hang on, _coming!_ ” came a voice from inside. This was shortly followed by a loud _thump_ , an equally loud crash and a shatter that sounded like ceramics breaking, and some very choice curse words that probably should ever be uttered in the presence of anybody under 18 years of age.

The door opened seconds later, and Agent Blacker leaned against the doorframe for support, looking ever-so-slightly annoyed – although not too much, this _was_ Blacker after all. His hair and general demeanour seemed, as always, permanently rumpled – ‘rumpled’ being possibly the best adjective you could have chosen to describe him at any given moment.

“Shoelaces got tangled in the swivel chair,” he reported to a point in the air several inches to the left of where Hitch actually was, “and I might need to go back to the canteen for a coffee refill, and possibly a new mug while I’m at it. _But_ I’m making progress.” His gaze flickered right, and he frowned. “Hang on, you’re not Agent Scott.”

“Correct,” Hitch agreed. “Are you expecting somebody else?”

Blacker stepped back a few paces, allowing Hitch entry. “Just somebody from Spectrum 3 who won’t leave me alone; not really a problem. Come on in. I need a distraction.”

Hitch stepped into the small room, which was dominated by a large table that was covered with a map of Twinford and the surrounding areas. Stuck into it were several colourful pins, which were sporadically connected with thin red string. He took a seat in one of the many unused chairs while Blacker set about clearing up the shattered remains of his coffee mug, picking up the shards and transferring them to one hand while he worked.

“So, what’s the news?” said Blacker, while Hitch examined the Twinford map absently. “LB need anything?”

“Not exactly,” Hitch hedged, then sighed and decided to go right for it. “Ruby’s gone missing.”

Blacker dropped the shards that he had been collecting, and they hit the ground, shattering again into more ceramic fractals. “ _What?_ ” he said, sounding horrified. “Missing – as in –”

“Nobody’s seen her for days, her house is completely empty,” Hitch said, “she left a note for her best friend telling him not to worry.” He paused before dropping the last bombshell. “And it looks like the Count’s back in town.”

“She - you –” Blacker stood up, and then promptly sat down heavily on the nearest chair. “That… that is really very not good.” He tapped distractedly on the table, looking worried. “You’ve told LB, right?”

Hitch pulled out Yellow Notebook #624 from his jacket pocket, and slid it across the table to Blacker. “I haven’t, actually.”

Blacker paused halfway to picking up the notebook, and frowned before shaking his head. “Hang on, I might have misheard some of this, so let me get this straight. Ruby’s vanished completely, it might be fair to assume that the Count Von Viscount – who is known to have a mortality rate with the people he encounters that comes to about 97% so far – and you _haven’t told the one person that could plausibly do something_ about all this?”

Hitch reached over, flipped towards the back of the notebook, and jabbed a finger at the line that read ‘ _LB’s been lying to us’._

“Oh,” said Blacker, looking down. “But that’s- hang on, is that Ruby’s handwriting?”

“Found this in her room,” Hitch said, as Blacker turned back to the beginning of the notebook and started to speed-read his way through it, flipping pages every few seconds. “Turns out the kid keeps detailed notes. I found a dragon’s hoard of these. Things get interesting last Wednesday evening,” he added, seeing that Blacker had found his way to the part of the notebook detailing Ruby’s recent suspicions of him and was looking slightly hurt.

“Okay,” said Blacker, and turned to the relevant section. He read through it quickly. “The Count’s apple? Is that literal or metaphorical?”

“There’s no references to any sort of apple in the previous entries,” Hitch pointed out, just as Blacker moved onto another line and practically shouted, “and _why would LB have killed Bradley Baker?_ ” in no small amount of shock.

Thankfully, the room was soundproof. It was just plain good luck that Hitch hadn’t left the door open.

“Jeez,” said Blacker after they had both exchanged nervous, guilty looks. “Do you think she got the wrong end of the stick again? I mean–” he gestured to himself, “no offense meant to Ruby, but last time she went making assumptions about the loyalty of Spectrum agents–”

“That’s noted and appreciated, but,” Hitch tapped the end of a pencil he had picked up against his nails, “I really don’t know anymore.”

“Wait, you think…” Blacker began, and trailed off. “ _Jeez_ ,” he said again. “Heavy stuff.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Blacker went on to the next page. He read over the dot diagrams with narrowed eyes. “What’s this?”

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me that,” Hitch admitted.

Blacker placed the notebook flat on the table, and studied it closely for a few seconds. “Huh. Well. The substitution that she’s written looks like the generally accepted alphabet in binary coding.” He paused briefly, eyed Hitch, and added, “a numerical system based around ones and zeros – uh, I maan, I could explain it in more detail, but–”

“I know what binary is,” Hitch said. “What about the diagrams?”

Blacker looked at the first one on the page – a 4x3 sketch with only a couple of boxes filled in.

“No idea,” he said, “not enough context. It could be some form of logic puzzle – or maybe ternary–” he was frowning, scratching the side of his nose with a pencil. “But no, that makes no sense. I’d say it was binary, but the numbers don’t line up.”

“They do in this one,” Hitch said, counting the boxes quickly, and pointing to a 9x5 diagram, “If you ignore the last column, and substitute the dots for 1s and blank boxes for 0s – does that come up with anything?”

“Let’s see,” Blacker said, and grabbed a pad of blank paper from a side table. He sketched out the dot box quickly, and then translated the sequence into binary, before referencing the numbers with the list of letters Ruby had written out.

“Nothing,” he said in disappointment, looking over the final result. “The last row doesn’t even translate properly.”

Hitch massaged his forehead for a moment. “Okay. Let’s put a pin in that and move on for the moment – just keep reading.”

Blacker pushed the sketch to the side, and flipped the page, reading the ‘ _LB’s been lying to us_ ’ entry again. “So she got into some place, and decided from whatever she found there that… what, LB couldn’t be trusted? Where did she go then?”

“Someplace connected to Spectrum,” Hitch suggested. “Possibly some place that needed preparation, since it took her a couple of days to get there.”

“You don’t think–” Blacker said. “–well, I mean… from what you’re describing, it sounds like she might have gone to the Prism Vault.”

“At any other time, I’d agree with you,” said Hitch. “Except there’s no way on this earth or any other that she or anybody else would have been able to get out to it by swimming in the last few days – have you seen the state of the weather?”

“And nobody would have flown her out in a helicopter, she doesn’t have code clearance,” Blacker agreed, and then sighed. “Okay, back to square one. If it wasn’t the Prism Vault, what could it be?”

“What areas of Spectrum do we know about that we can’t access?” Hitch asked.

The two of them considered for a while, and came up with a grand total of nothing. LB was extremely good at keeping security in Spectrum almost ridiculously tight, and this situation was no exception.

“Okay,” said Blacker. “In that case – which other high-level Spectrum areas _don’t_ we know about?”

“It might be hard to make a list,” said Hitch, “considering we don’t know about them.”

Blacker looked at the last page in the notebook; raised his eyebrows. “And I’m assuming you don’t know what this part means, either.”

“She was looking into architecture before she went AWOL,” Hitch said. “But apart from that, no.”

“Cogan,” said Blacker speculatively. “Sounds like a place.”

“Or a person,” Hitch suggested. “I can run it through the records.”

“That might be a good idea,” Blacker said. He shut the notebook and then promptly opened it again with the expression of somebody who knew he’d missed something. “Was there another notebook? It feels like there’s more to whatever she was writing.”

“I couldn’t find one.” Hitch was mildly relieved to hear that somebody else agreed with his suspicions that there was another one of Ruby’s notebooks out there – a piece of the puzzle that they didn’t have. “She might have taken it with her, though.”

“That’s another dead end,” said Blacker. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Just this.” Hitch drew out the envelope that SJ had given him from his jacket, and placed it on the table. “The kid asked SJ to do some sort of analysis on a compound, but she didn’t get a response until after she vanished.”

Blacker tore open the top of the envelope, and slid out the single sheet of paper. He held it up, and read it out aloud. “ _Main components: quartz, alkali feldspar and plagioclase feldspar. Trace amounts of hornblende and biotite mica. Conclusion: 89% granite._ She asked the chem lab to analyse granite?”

Hitch took the sheet and examined it himself. The other 11% of the analysed material was completely unknown. Definitely a strange thing for results produced from the Spectrum labs, which were generally cuttingly accurate.

 **HITCH:** Looks like we’ve got a whole lot of questions and not many answers.

 **BLACKER:** Isn’t that always the case?

 **HITCH:** So, you got any ideas?

 **BLACKER:** Hm.

A pause as Blacker looked thoughtfully at the cover of the notebook again, running his finger along the tiny ‘#624’ in the uppermost corner.

“Well, let’s put it this way,” said Blacker eventually. “If you were Ruby, and you were going to break into some top-security Spectrum vault, what would be your first move?”

“Finding it in the first place?” Hitch suggested. “Getting everybody out of the way? Or – _oh,_ ” he said as the realization hit. “Of course. The gadget room.”

“Exactly,” said Blacker.

* * *

 

Hal, the Spectrum gadget manager, took one look at Blacker and Hitch standing in the doorway, and sighed in a resigned sort of manner. “All right. What did our resident kleptomaniac daredevil wonder child steal this time?”

Blacker choked slightly at this nickname and dissolved into a silent coughing fit. Hitch simply shrugged. “We were hoping you could tell us that.”

“Right,” Hal said, yawning and turning to enter the main room, dripping on the carpet slightly. His hair was soaked, and he looked like he had come in from outside very recently. “You know, she could’ve come in herself. I’ve given up being angry at this point – she could probably tell me that she had stolen LB’s parachute cape, and I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Hitch and Blacker followed Hal into the room, and watched as the gadget manager picked up a record book, paging through it. “Give me a minute, I’ll try to track down anything that’s missing.”

While he was doing that, Hitch looked over the new arrivals section of the room.

 **_Rubik’s Cube Hand Grenade,_ ** said one of the item tags, right underneath an ordinary-looking Rubik’s cube, the colors of which had been scrambled thoroughly. _Solve to detonate. Only recommended for agents with excellent puzzle-solving capabilities._

Right next to that was a tag that read **_Button-hole Cameras_ ** _– reusable. Stick where necessary._

The space where the actual cameras should have been was empty.

Hitch called Blacker and Hal over, and indicated the missing cameras. “Were these checked out recently?”

A quick check in the records book revealed that no, they hadn’t been. “Looks like yet another casualty of Agent Redfort’s sticky fingers,” Hal said. “Keep looking if you want. I can compare with any irregularities you find.”

Hal took a seat in the corner of the room, and began fiddling with what looked like a pocketwatch and a miniature screwdriver, and Blacker and Hitch continued scanning the shelves.

“The Sonic Umbrella,” Blacker called out after a couple of minutes.

Hal flipped through his book. “Agent Scott had it up ‘till a few days ago, but it looks like it was returned.”

The Sonic Umbrella- by the description on the card next to where it should have been- was a device that could use complicated frequencies to keep the user dry during light to heavy rain. _Doesn’t work in overly snowy conditions or underwater,_ the description continued, and there was a small, handwritten note next to that that looked like it might have been from LB herself – _Lillian, kindly stop taking this out on your waterski trips. There will be_ _consequences_ _._

“Okay,” said Blacker. “A few mini-cameras and an umbrella. What else?”

There was a few more minutes of silent searching, and then:

“It looks like your invisible pen’s gone missing, too,” Hitch reported to Hal. “Unless it was meant to be invisible in the first place, in which case you should probably have better security measures.”

“Invisible pen?” Hal asked, missing the joke completely. “Oh – you mean the infrared device. Nobody’s had a chance to take that out yet.”

“What are these?” Blacker frowned, picking up a pair of sunglasses that were hooked over the edge of the shelf. He leant forward; read the card aloud. “Infrared pen – to be used under any circumstances. Extremely versatile. Can only be read under infrared camera, or with the accompanying eyewear…” He looked at the sunglasses again. “Handy.”

“A lot more handy if _somebody_ hadn’t taken the pen,” Hal pointed out. “Where is that kid, anyway?”

“She’s a bit busy at the moment,” Hitch said easily. “I’m sure she’ll come down and apologize when I tell her that we found her out. Do you mind if we sign the infrared pen out?”

“Sure,” Hal said, writing it down in his notebook, “not that it’ll do you much good without the other component. Consider it all yours for the time being.”

“I’ll get it from the kid when I see her next,” Hitch said, and pocketed the sunglasses.

 **RULE 34:** **_You can never know when something’s going to come in handy._ **

They scoured the room for other missing devices, but ended up finding nothing unusual or out of place.

Hitch and Blacker left the gadget room a short while later, one pair of sunglasses heavier and with no actual answers to speak of. By mutual agreement, they began heading back to the violet section, and by extension the map room, which they had originally met in.

“That sure was illuminating,” said Blacker when it became apparent that Hitch wasn’t going to speak.

“What possible use could she have for any of those items?” Hitch said out loud, more to himself than anything.

Blacker frowned, thinking, and they walked in silence for a few more minutes.

“Well, it _has_ been pretty stormy for the last few days,” he said eventually. “The Sonic Umbrella makes sense in that respect – especially if she needed to get someplace hard to reach in intense weather.”

“That’s fair enough,” Hitch acknowledged. “But what about–”

He broke off suddenly, having seen the rather distinctive figure of the head of Spectrum 8 approaching from the other end of the hallway. Blacker opened his mouth, obviously confused, but quickly spotted LB too and understood.

“That’s just the basis of the project,” he said quickly, sounding all for the world as if he were in the middle of a lengthy conversation. “Although obviously it’s going to take some fine tuning before the system can process anything of actual _importance._ We need to get the go-ahead from the tech department first, and then we can test it on some actual cases – oh, hello, LB–” The two of them were now level with LB, who was looking about the same as she always did – barefoot and in a white suit, with only her lips and nails painted brightest red.

“Blacker,” LB acknowledged with a nod, and then turned to Hitch. “We need to talk.”

“Sure,” said Hitch, and nodded to Blacker. “See you later.”

Blacker shot him a thumbs-up, and a smile that was laced with an impressively small amount of panic, before continuing on his way.

“What did you need?” Hitch asked LB once he had disappeared from sight.

“Redfort,” she said, quite flatly. Her expression betrayed nothing

Hitch internally winced, and prepared for disaster. “What about her?”

“She’s needed for the next section of her training,” LB said. “Apparently she’s not responding to any pages on the Escape Watch, or any other device.” She looked impatient, more impatient than usual – and maybe a bit nervous? Hitch couldn’t quite tell. “Pick her up ASAP, will you, this has already been delayed enough.”

Hitch deliberated for maybe two whole seconds before coming up with a plan that Ruby herself probably would have approved of. “She can’t make it at the moment, I’m afraid.”

“Oh?” LB raised an eyebrow.

“The kid’s really sick,” Hitch said. “ _Really_ sick, and I can’t reiterate that enough. She can barely even sit up at the moment – must’ve caught something at school.”

It wasn’t the most perfect of lies, but it would probably hold up until somebody other than him checked the Redfort house and realized that Ruby wasn’t so much sick as missing altogether.

LB only looked mildly surprised at this. “I’m sorry to hear that, it means we’ve got to reschedule everything.”

“It looks like she’ll be out of commission for a couple of days, maybe a week,” Hitch offered. He paused, weighed some variables in his head. “I might need to take some time off.”

“What, to play nursemaid?” LB looked almost amused. “Just when I thought you couldn’t sink any lower.”

“The kid’s parents aren’t home this week, and neither is their housekeeper,” Hitch said. “Her fever’s bad. I don’t think leaving her alone would be a good idea, let alone an ethical one.”

LB’s mouth twisted briefly in what could have been sympathy, but this quickly flattened out into her usual impassive mask. “You’re right. Take the week off, barring emergencies. I don’t have time to debrief now – we’ll have to deal with that later, unless there’s anything important I need to know?” She had begun to turn away, but had paused halfway through doing that, head tilted quizzically.

Hitch once again weighed his options, and this time decided on the truth. “It’s highly likely that the Count’s back on Twinford.”

If he had been expecting for her to react to this in any way, she didn’t show any signs of any sort of emotion. “I see. We’ll need to double security in that case- try to track down the mole. Is that all?”

 _No,_ he thought. “Yes,” he said.

“Good.” LB turned fully and began to walk away from him. She paused momentarily, but didn’t look back at him. “Oh- and call Agent Lillian. I talked with them this morning and they said they never received any sort of message from you.”

“The power must have cut before it went through,” said Hitch, and he barely hesitated at it this time. He recalled one of Ruby’s rules- **RULE 32** **_: Tell one lie and get ready to tell a whole lot more._ ** “I’ll get back to them later. It wasn’t that important.”

LB nodded at this, and walked off. She whisked around a corner, and then was gone. Hitch released a sigh of relief that he hadn’t realized he was holding. He wondered just when he had become so paranoid- he had known LB since they were practically kids, and had never once had any reason to suspect that she might be anything _but_ unfailingly loyal to Spectrum.

And yet…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That pen that Ruby stole is a real thing, by the way, although it's… [not quite the same as what I described.](https://www.maxmax.com/phosphorsdyesandinks/infrared-phosphors-dyes-and-inks/infrared-down-conversion-powder/ir-ink-down-conversion%20) I have no clue if the Rubik's Cube Hand Grenade does exist, but the Sonic Umbrella was sort of based off the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
> 
> Reviews sustain me much more than food ever does.


	6. Several days ago, in a place far away from Twinford...

...Lorelei narrowed her eyes, and pressed her fingers to the full-length mirror- basically the only decoration in the small room she was in. She traced the outline of her face on the glass – today she had remade herself in the image of a film star, one of Hollywood's most famous. For now and as long as she wanted, she looked the spitting image of Audrey Hepburn – even her mother probably couldn't tell the difference.

It wasn't as if she needed the confidence boost brought by looking exactly like Audrey Hepburn, or even  _wanted_  it. Despite her talent for disguises, Lorelei Von Leyden felt exactly at home looking how she was naturally. Her unchanged face was, she felt, the perfect reflection of her personality. Beautiful, sharp,  _dangerous._ This was simply homework; reassurance that her skills hadn't declined in the short time that she hadn't been practicing them.

Lorelei ran her fingers along the contours of her cheeks for the briefest of seconds, and then dragged her painted nails sharply down those perfect, doll-like cheekbones. The latex mask tore – ruining what would be considered by most people a work of art. She tore off the wig that she had been using – flinging it to the back of the room to rest with her bags- and undid the hairnet that had been keeping her natural hair in check.

There was a knock at the door, and she spun around sharply – she had not been expecting visitors. She stalked over to the entrance, not bothering to fully remove the damaged mask from her face, and paused before opening. "Who is it?"

"I'm here with some news, sweetie," purred a voice – Australian accent heavy. Lorelei froze instantly.

"How did you find me?" she said, looking for a way to barricade the door. But apart from the mirror and her bags, the room was empty- nothing to use as weight.

"It wasn't hard, you just need to learn to read the signs. You going to let me in, or am I going to have to get my boys to force the door open for me?"

Lorelei grit her teeth, and unceremoniously flung the door open in her unwelcome visitor's face. "You are not my mother," she said to the woman standing on the other side, flanked by two burly, hulking bodyguards.

"Never said I was, sweetie," said the woman calmly. Lorelei inhaled, and it was subtle but she could still smell cinnamon and the traces of smoke on the Australian's body and clothes. "My, though- this is beautiful." She reached up to touch the ripped latex mask that still covered most of Lorelei's face. "Hepburn, correct? You always were so skilled, darling. I must say, I'm very proud."

Lorelei flinched back instinctively, pushing the older woman's hands away.

"So jumpy," the woman smiled, seemingly unruffled, even as she returned her arms to her sides. "Is that a recent thing, I wonder, or were you always like this?"

"What do you want," snapped Lorelei, unwilling to be drawn into banter.

"Just came to drop by some news, like I said," the Australian said, showing her teeth. "Little Ruby Red's found out something she shouldn't," she said, sing-song.

"Found out what?" Lorelei asked, interested despite herself. "You don't mean – the identity of –"

"I doubt that she's worked  _that_ out," the Australian dismissed, "at least not yet. But she's found our mole in the system. Well, the Count's mole, anyway."

"That has nothing to do with me." Lorelei turned, and stalked back to her full-length mirror. Carefully, she began removing the mask from her skin, peeling back the latex. "If you have nothing useful to add..."

"I also wanted to let you know I'll be in touch," said the Australian, and a business card went whistling through the air, landing on the ground in front of Lorelei. She stopped peeling back the second skin, and leant down, somewhat unwillingly, to pick it up.

On the card was printed a phone number – nothing more, nothing less.

Lorelei turned back to the doorway, just to see the tail end of the Australian's coat as she whisked out the door.

"I'll be in touch," she shouted as the footsteps of both her and her bodyguards echoed down the hallway. "Don't call me – I'll call you."


	7. Chapter Four: Friday (4)

Blacker barely glanced up when Hitch entered Room 223 this time, instead just waving a distracted hand in his direction. “Hey, come and have a look at this.”

Hitch came and had a look. Blacker had made copies of a few newspaper articles, all dated a few years back. They all seemed to be about historical places in Twinford – in particular, the Twinford Bridge, which bridged the gap between centre town and the industrial district (also commonly known as ‘Trashford’ by locals). Apparently the Bridge had celebrated its twentieth year since its construction at the time of publication.

“Okay,” he said, “what am I looking at?”

Blacker pulled the cap off the pen he was holding with his teeth, and leaned over Hitch to circle a name with it.  **_Professor Arthur C. Cogan._ **

“Arthur Cogan,” Hitch said. “Why is that...” he trailed off, frowning, before getting it. “Of course - Cogan, the last word on Ruby’s list. Is it the same person?”

“I ran it through the records,” Blacker confirmed. “I think this is our guy. He’s an architect – retired, but he’s done a lot of important work around town. If Ruby’s notes and reading choices are anything to go by…”

“ _ Good _ ,” said Hitch, with feeling. “You don’t happen to have an address?”

“54 Fortune Road,” Blacker said, scribbling it down on a scrap of paper as he said it. “Has the storm died down enough for you to go out?”

“It wasn’t so bad when I came in,” Hitch said, taking the proffered scrap, “and Fortune Street isn’t too far from where I parked my car. I’ll go interrogate the professor, and come back to check in.”

“Good. Great. I’ll just –” Blacker gestured vaguely at the room in general. “Code. Er – decipher. Decipher the code? Also possibly coffee,” he added, gazing regretfully at the abandoned mug that lay in thousands of pieces on the floor. “I don’t think I’m going to be getting much work done without caffeine in my system.”

Hitch left Blacker to his work, and took the same way out of Spectrum that he had entered- passing through most of the cool colored hallways and passing Buzz and her phones in the process. Upon exiting the tunnel, he saw, or rather felt, that the wind had died down markedly in the time that he had been inside HQ. In fact, Penny Books – as well as some other stores and shops – had opened up for business, and there were even a few brave souls walking the streets, most wearing heavy jackets and scarves.

The drive to Fortune Road was short and uneventful. Professor Arthur Cogan’s house was located at the very end of Fortune Road, cradled into the corner of where it met Rose Street in a T-intersection.

The house itself appeared to be balancing out of pure determination on its structure’s behalf and some impressive feats of architecture. It was a very eclectic design; the sort you’d never have expected to see in Twinford. It was made up of geometric patterns and shapes that all sort of fitted together in order to create the walls and roof – and mainly triangles. The windows were stained glass, fractal patterns that glinted and caught the dull morning light. The overall effect: very big, and very intimidating.

Although Hitch had been around the town many times for various reasons, he could safely admit to never having seen this house before, or if he had, having simply not noticed how outright bizarre it was. That fact was bizarre in its own right, to be perfectly honest.

Hitch parked his car on the verge, and headed up the front garden path- paved with what looked like shingles from a roof in various shades of red. They produced a curious  _ clinking  _ sound when you stepped on them.

The front door was a massive slab of oak wood with no discernible door handle or even hinges. There was no hint as to how it would open – or  _ if  _ it would even open. The house itself was big enough that simply knocking wouldn’t be enough for the sound to carry, unless the occupant was very near to the front door. And another curious thing – there was no doorbell. In fact, the only thing that particularly stood out on the front porch was the thick rope dangling out of a hole in the roof.

Hitch tried knocking first, even though he knew it probably wouldn’t do any good. 

Fifteen minutes passed, and nobody had responded.

He moved over to examine the rope, and quickly realized that words were written on it, in spiralling text that followed the weave of the material.

He glanced upwards at the house and saw that, perched at the very top, there was an alcove that resembled something from out of a church. He couldn’t see very clearly, but it looked like there was something metal glinting inside.

Deciding that there was nothing for it, he wrapped both hands around the rope hanging from the top of the front porch, and pulled down, hard.

For a while, it seemed like the rope was just attached to something solid and he wasn’t accomplishing anything. But slowly, it began to give under the strain, and a clear, ringing note echoed out over the top of the house.

The bell at the top of 54 Fortune Road was tolling.

Birds scattered everywhere, taking to the windy winter sky in sudden panic. Hitch pulled the rope again for good measure, and the note echoed out again, just as clear as before.

He stepped back, letting the rope drop from his hand. The street fell silent within a matter of minutes, but nobody made themselves apparent.

Hitch was just preparing to leave when he heard the sound of gears clinking against each other, and he saw out of the corner of his eye the sheet of wood where the door should have been shuddering, as if in protest. He turned back around, and watched as the wooden barrier began to rise from the ground, like the opening to a fantastical cave. It folded its way into the frame, leaving behind the entrance to the house.

Standing at the entrance, finger hovering over a lever set into the wall, was a man who looked well into his late middle age. He was wearing a plaid jumper, cream trousers and a tiny pair of spectacles – no,  _ pince-nez _ glasses, clipped to his nose- that he peered over at Hitch.

“Oh!” he said, sounding surprised. “Another visitor – so soon?”

“Are you Professor Arthur Cogan?” Hitch asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” the man said, and laughed, in a startled yet pleased manner. “Goodness me. I get next to no company throughout the whole year, yet as soon as nasty weather starts up, people I’ve never met come flocking to my door! How extraordinary!” He laughed again, shook his head, and then stepped back, seeming to realize something. “But I’m being incredibly rude! I haven’t even asked your name yet!”

“Most people call me Hitch,” he said. “I was hoping you might have the time to discuss some things with me.”

“That would be a welcome distraction!” Cogan smiled. “It does tend to get awfully boring here, all by myself- some intelligent conversation might be just what I need. Won’t you come in?”

Hitch stepped through the front door, and Cogan pulled the lever again, causing the wooden slab to fold down from the roof once more, covering the doorway. Even from the inside, the mechanism was well-concealed, every part of it fitting neatly into a gap in the roof that you wouldn’t notice unless you looked closely.

“Yes, that’s one of my best pieces of work,” Professor Cogan said, in response to Hitch’s interest in the door. “Practically the first thing I installed into the house once I had built it! – after the bell tower, of course. Come through to the dining room, I’ll put some tea on.”

Hitch followed the older man as he moved through his own house, quicker than you might expect a man his age to do. The interior design of the place was just as eclectic as the outside, but not at all in an unpleasant way. It seemed to blend the old with the new; a sort of futuristic dwelling with touches of the old-fashioned. On the way to the kitchen, he passed several cats – all different breeds, but nearly all perched in odd places like on top of a rocking chair and squished in between rows of bookshelves. Apparently Cogan was a cat enthusiast.

“You said you had another visitor recently?” Hitch asked as they entered the kitchen and Cogan began searching in cupboards that were set into the roof for a tea-kettle. “How long ago was that?”

“Sit down, sit down!” Cogan chastised as he located the kettle. Hitch sat down at the nearest chair and watched as the professor began searching elsewhere for other things. “Ah yes – now, the cups… yes, just a couple of days ago, if I remember correctly. Charming young lady, if a bit single-minded. Her name began with R… Rebecca? Rosalie?”

“Ruby,” Hitch muttered to himself, suspicions confirmed.

Cogan had evidently overheard him from across the room, from where he was setting up the kettle on the stove. He had surprisingly good hearing for such an old man. “Ruby, yes, that was it! Miss Redfort. She had to practically climb the bell-rope to get it to ring,” he chuckled to himself, pulling cups off hooks embedded in a spiral column protruding down from the room. “Yes- quite impressive. I’m sorry, how do you know her?”

“I’m her uncle,” said Hitch, the lie springing to his lips easily. The obvious excuse that Ruby would have used if she needed to get information from somebody would be under the pretext of some sort of school project. He crossed his fingers under the table. “She lost the notes she took from the last time she was here, and couldn’t come back today – she’s really kind of sick this week.”

“Oh dear,” the professor said, looking genuinely distressed. “Is the young lady quite all right? She looked fine when I saw her last, I wouldn’t have thought…” He trailed off, and checked the kettle distractedly.

A brown tabby cat leapt from the countertop to the kitchen table, landing without even rocking it. It stared curiously at Hitch for a second before picking its way to the newspaper that was lying off-centre on the table. It plopped itself down decisively, and stretched out like it owned the place, purring in contentment.

“She’s fine, just a bit bedridden if you know what I mean,” Hitch said. “She would’ve come to see you herself, but her parents said no way. So,” he shrugged, and spread his arms wide, “I’m here in her place.”

**RULE 65:** **_People believe what they want to believe._ **

“Well, I’m happy to help,” said Cogan, and held up several boxes of loose-leaf tea. “Ginger, green, or chamomile?”

“Green, thanks,” Hitch said, and after a minute, Cogan joined him at the table with two steaming mugs of tea, one of which he passed to Hitch. He absently rubbed the tabby cat behind the ears, and it purred even harder, like it was an engine rather than a feline being.

“Let it steep for a while,” he cautioned, and slid over a container of sugar. “Now, what do you know about your niece’s research project?”

“Not much at all,” Hitch replied honestly. “She didn’t get around to telling me anything, I thought you might be able to take everything from the beginning?”

Cogan made a humming noise, and took the milk container from the centre of the table. “I’d be happy to do that. Let’s see… ah, yes. What do you know about heat expansion?”

“I know that extreme temperatures can cause some materials to expand and contract,” Hitch said cautiously. “But that’s about it.”

“I see. Well,” said Cogan. “Basically, heat tends to flow from areas of high temperature to areas of low temperature, which is why you tend to keep the doors in your house closed during cold weather – you don’t want the heat to escape, correct?”

Hitch nodded.

“Many solids- metals, even wood- are made up of crystals. Well, we call them crystals, they’re more like… well, shapes made up of molecules, joined to one another like they’re on springs.” Cogan lifted up his mug of tea, and pulled his hand back, as if to demonstrate an imaginary spring. “A spring that is pulled back, just before it is released, is an example of potential energy, or the energy that an object possesses by virtue of its position. For a crystalline solid at room temperature, potential energy and spacing between molecules are relatively low. But as temperature increases and the solid expands, the space between molecules increases—as does the potential energy in the solid.” He paused to adjust his glasses, and frowned slightly. “I’m not getting too complicated, am I? I always find I tend to ramble when talking about my specialities.”

“I think I’m keeping up,” said Hitch. “Please go on.”

Cogan nodded, and took a sip of his tea. “Well, you may have noticed that doors and windows tend to rattle on colder nights, and get stuck in their bracings on hotter nights. This is the same principle.” He paused, and grinned ruefully. “In layman’s terms, when things heat up, they swell in size. When they cool down, they shrink. It’s not true in all cases, of course, but that’s the gist of it.”

“You’re an architect,” Hitch said, “but I would have thought that heat expansion would be a pretty minor topic in your profession.”

Cogan laughed. “Some of my best work has been related to it, to be honest. I’d consider myself a bit of an expert when it comes to heat expansion. Take my bridge, for example.”

“The Twinford Bridge?” Hitch asked, remembering the newspaper article that Blacker had found.

“Yes, I adapted a type of expansion joint on them to prevent them from cracking and breaking during hotter times of the year.” Cogan smiled, looking slightly dreamy. “Rather clever, if I do say so myself. It works by a sort of… mm, shall we call it, an interlocking metal structure? Yes, that – it takes the strain of the contractions.”

“I’m not sure if I understand,” Hitch said.

“Well, you know how I said that heat tends to flow to the area of lowest temperature?” Cogan asked, to which Hitch nodded. “The bridge itself is made out of stone, but the joints are made out of metal, which conducts heat better. It takes the strain, so to speak.” He frowned. “You know, it’s interesting that that topic should come up. Miss Redfort seemed rather curious about the same thing.”

Hitch sat up straighter, suddenly much more interested. “Oh?”

“Yes, she wanted to know how certain metals would react under high heat…” Cogan seemed to think for a few moments, and then he stood up, crossing to the refrigerator. “I seem to recall that she drew a diagram. Hmm, let me see if I can find it.”

Several minutes later, the professor returned with a scrap of paper, which he placed on the table between the two of them. “I believe the class she was taking required her to design a sort of unorthodox entranceway. She wanted me to check it over to see if it was viable. Goodness me, middle school courses certainly have gotten difficult nowadays, haven’t they?”

Hitch seriously doubted that whatever Ruby had been doing had anything to do with her schoolwork, but decided not to voice that thought out loud. Instead, he looked over the diagram she had drawn.

“This is an entrance?” he wondered aloud.

Cogan glanced over his shoulder. “Yes, it rather puzzled me too – at least, at first it did. But it’s actually rather clever, when you think about it.” He tapped the drawing. “You see, this place would – hypothetically – be completely sealed during hot periods of the day. The metal disc that serves as the trapdoor is completely sealed into the granite rock by the thermal expansion that takes place. There’s no way to move it aside until the rock and the metal cool down.”

“That  _ is  _ interesting,” Hitch muttered, and then, “hang on, did you say ‘granite’?”

“Yes – the rock surrounding the trapdoor is apparently composed of mostly granite. It doesn’t conduct heat quite as well as the actual trapdoor metal.” Cogan sat down again. “It works on the same principle as expansion joints. Is there any reason why granite is especially significant?”

“No reason,” Hitch said quickly. “Is there anything else that Ruby asked you about?”

“She was especially curious about ways to force metals into expanding and contracting,” Cogan said. “There’s no real way to do that apart from applying heat and cold respectively, of course. That seemed to annoy her particularly. But apart from that – no, that was about it. Once I explained the principles behind the diagram she had shown me, she seemed to grow slightly agitated. And then she rushed out of here like a tiger was chasing her!’

Hitch’s tea had gone cold by then, a fact that he only realized when he took a sip of it. He placed it down on the table hurriedly. Quickly, he made a show of checking his watch, and then acting startled. “Oh jeez – I only just remembered, I have an appointment with my optometrist in about 15 minutes.”

“Then I shouldn’t keep you!” Cogan exclaimed immediately, standing up. “Dear me, I’m awfully sorry. I tend to ramble quite a bit. I’d feel terrible if you were late.”

“He probably won’t mind if I’m a couple of minutes late, but I should go.” Hitch carried his half-finished mug of tea to the sink, and placed it there, before turning to the professor. “Thank you very much for your time.”

“Not at all,” Cogan chuckled. “it’s good to have some company around the house. Apart from the cats, I mean. They’re excellent as footwarmers, but... – well, cats are so very self-centred, when it comes down to it.”

Hitch, not exactly being a cat person, only shrugged.

Cogan led him to the front door, which he opened once again by means of the lever on the wall. “Tell Miss Redfort that I’d be delighted to see her again, whenever she feels up to it.”

“I’ll pass the message on,” Hitch said.

Cogan smiled. “Please do. She really is an extraordinary girl.”


	8. Chapter Five: Friday (5)

Blacker was still puzzling over the notebook when Hitch returned to Spectrum. The mass of print-outs that were covering the table had grown exponentially while Hitch was gone. Blacker also had acquired his desired cup of coffee – several, if the stack of them in the code room sink was anything to go by.

“Hey,” said Blacker in greeting, several minutes after Hitch had actually walked in. “You found anything?”

“A bit,” Hitch said. “Probably not as much as you.”

Blacker glanced down at the collage that had been formed by the many layers of information, and almost looked surprised at how much had accumulated there. “Ah – well, appearances can be deceiving. Most of this is probably unrelated.”

Hitch picked up a picture of Napoleon, upon which had been scribbled  **_Moriarty????_ ** in thick dark pencilstrokes. “I’ll say. Just how long was I gone, again?”

Blacker let out a short laugh, and pushed a chair out from the table with a foot. “Okay, let’s look at what we’ve got.”

Hitch took a seat, and then explained briefly what had transpired at Professor Arthur Cogan’s house that morning. Blacker nodded along, took a few notes, and added them to the rest.

“It’s interesting, but I don’t see how it helps,” he said. “Not at where we are currently, anyway.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Hitch agreed. “So what did you find?”

Blacker dug through the pile, flicking sheets aside carelessly as he did. Some ended up on the floor, some on the far end of the table. “It occurred to me that the button cameras Ruby stole must have been placed  _ somewhere _ ,” he said, “and she also had to have a way to access the feed. So I went back to the tech department, and got Hal to remotely access them for me.”

**BLACKER:** Most of them looked like they were in a drawer somewhere, maybe she put them away and forgot about them, or just didn’t use them. But there was one that piqued my interest.

**HITCH:** Go on.

**BLACKER:** Well, the images weren’t exactly the  _ best  _ of quality, if you know what I mean. The room they’re in was kinda dark.

He pushed some polaroid printouts towards Hitch, who glanced over the first few. They were all focused on a metal door with a tiny window set into it. The door itself was set into a wall that had been painted black.

**HITCH:** If it was a video feed, then why do we only have single images?

**BLACKER:** I mean, I could access the actual feed, but there’s pretty much no difference between that and a static snapshot. Wherever that camera is, nothing much is happening there.

**HITCH:** Do we know what they were recording earlier this week?

**BLACKER:** No can do, I’m afraid. They’re simple cameras. They don’t record anything, just broadcast it to a receiver, and even then, we can’t track it down to where it is.

Hitch examined the images. The main focus was the door, but just out of shot was what looked like a room number on a metal plate. He offered it to Blacker. “What does this look like to you?”

Blacker squinted for a moment. “Huh, now that you mention it – it looks sort of like the numbers on the rooms in Spectrum 8.” A moment passed, and then Blacker slammed his head down onto the table in exasperation. “- it  _ is  _ a room in Spectrum 8, isn’t it. I think I’ve been working on this too long, I’m missing the downright obvious.”

“We’ve all been there, don’t worry,” Hitch said with just a touch of amusement. He looked at the image again, trying to make out the exact number. All that was visible was what looked like half of the number zero. “Now that I think about it – do we even  _ have _ a black section in Spectrum 8?”

“If we do, I’ve never heard about it,” said Blacker. “Or been there. It might be restricted.”

“Or nobody’s bothered to ask about it,” Hitch said. “I’m at a higher security clearance than you, next to nothing is restricted from me.”

They sat in puzzled silence for maybe a minute, before Blacker reached over and pulled another huge sheet of paper over the table, covering the map of Twinford that had already been there.

“Okay,” he said, “sitting here and talking about uncertainties is going to get us absolutely  _ nowhere,  _ so I vote we start mapping out everything that we  _ do _ know.”

Hitch picked up a pen. “That works for me.”

* * *

 

Blacker and Hitch both placed down their pens and sat back in near-synchronisation, surveying their work.

“From the top,” said Blacker, like a magician announcing the first magic trick of his performance. He tapped the brainstorm where it read ‘THE COUNT’. “Ruby did  _ not  _ trust Spectrum, or at least not LB.”

Hitch was momentarily puzzled, and then he got it- Blacker was listing out all the facts of the case as they knew it so far. It was a good idea – all they seemed to have were puzzles and mysteries, and it would be helpful to sort out the facts from everything else. “Right – that was due to the Count telling her that LB killed Bradley Baker, which may or may not be true.”

“But it wasn’t completely down to that,” Blacker countered, tracing his way down the map with his finger. “She wouldn’t have believed him with no proof whatsoever, so she must have found something that solidified the suspicions, wherever she ‘got into’.”

“That place is most likely wherever the camera she stole was mounted,” Hitch added, “some section of Spectrum 8. And those dot diagrams had something to do with it.”

“Whatever she found was shocking,” said Blacker. “It led to her researching architecture, and this entranceway.” He indicated the sketch from Professor Cogan’s house. “She also didn’t trust anyone with this information, not even her best friend – probably felt that she had to deal with it herself, for whatever reason.”

“A few days later, she disappeared.” Hitch looked down at the map. “She didn’t bring along any devices that could track her, and left only a very simple note.”

At the bottom of the brainstorm was the single question –  **_what happened to Ruby?_ **

The answer was by no means complete, but part of it seemed very clear now.

“She did it on her own terms,” said Hitch. “For whatever reason, she went off the grid by herself.”

“That’s great and all, but it still doesn’t answer the question of  _ why, _ ” said Blacker in annoyance, resting his elbows on the table. “And speaking of which – when did she go to meet that professor guy? Did you get an exact date?

“He said two days ago,” Hitch said.

“And you’re absolutely sure there’s no extra notebook in Ruby’s room? You couldn’t have miscounted or something?”

“Maybe,” said Hitch, “but it’s just as likely that she never actually had another one in the first place, or took it with her, or something else like that.”

“That’s unlikely, and I’m about to tell you why.” He pulled the notebook, now slightly dog-eared by the number of times he had flipped through it, and set it down in the centre of the brainstorming session. “Whatever you can say about Ruby, one thing’s for sure, the girl’s  _ meticulous.  _ She’s never missed a day of taking notes – she barely misses an  _ hour. _ Even towards the end of this book, she still made a point to at least make one entry per day.”

“I knew that already,” Hitch said. “So?”

“So, this last entry.” He flipped to the final page, which contained the list. “Sunday morning.”

“It’s Friday,” said Hitch. “Which means–”

“Two days ago, on Wednesday, she was still in town, she met with Arthur Cogan. She disappeared shortly after that.” Blacker tapped the notebook significantly. “That leaves almost two whole days unaccounted for.”

Hitch glanced down, and then back up again.

“I’ll look through her room again,” he said.

Blacker let out a long breath of air. “Yeah. Do that.”

* * *

Hitch headed back to the Green-wood House, looked through Ruby’s room again, and predictably managed to turn up a grand total of absolutely nothing new. There were no extra, mysteriously reappearing notebooks, and no hidden clues.

**RULE 48** :  **_Don’t get distracted – focus on what you gotta focus on._ **

He returned to Spectrum 8 shortly after, feeling uncomfortable in the large but uncharacteristically empty house, and went straight to Buzz.

“ _ Quid est? _ ” she asked him after putting down a pale peach phone.

“Wrong language. Try again,” he suggested. “English is fine- or, failing that, I’m familiar with Spanish, French and ASL.”

She blinked at him far too slowly, lizard-like. “What do you need?”

“I need a refresher on where the archive room is,” he said. “Haven’t been there in a while. You wouldn’t happen to know anything, would you?”

“Try sepia,” she said nasally. “Edging into brown, probably.”

He gave up on trying to provoke her into replying – really, he didn’t see what Ruby enjoyed about doing it, the woman never reacted to  _ anything _ – and set off in the direction of the aged-looking section of Spectrum. It took him a few wrong doors, but after a while he found the room he was looking for.

“Archive department?” he asked, edging into Room 184, and spotting a flash of vividly reddish-pink hair between the filing shelves.

“Yep, that’s the place!” called a voice from the direction of the hair, bright but slightly tired-sounding. “Hang on just a sec, I’ll try to get over to – oh hell…” This interjection was quickly followed by a loud crash and muffled cursing.

“Need some help?” Hitch asked, closing the door behind him and approaching the source of the disturbance. Kneeling on the ground, next to a cracked wooden storage box that had spilled its paper contents all over the ground, was somebody he recognized as Agent Lillian – an agent who was on the younger side of the Spectrum team, but had been there long enough to be respected as a member of the team, so to speak.

“Thanks, I owe you one,” said Lillian, and between the two of them they managed to stack the files and records into the wooden crate – although there was no fixing the crack, it would still serve well as a storage unit. “Jeez – the one day I decide to go and check the paper records just  _ had  _ to be the day I screw up my leg, huh?” The younger agent indicated their leg, which appeared to be heavily bandaged. As they hauled themselves up, using a nearby shelf as support, Hitch noticed that they were limping slightly. “Should’ve stuck to digital. What were you after?”

“You don’t work in Archive,” Hitch noted. “What were you doing down here?”

“Just said,” Lillian said. “Checking paper records for the mole problem – you heard about the security breach, yeah? Well, nobody was down here when I came in, so I went looking for it myself.”

“And did you find what you were looking for?”

“Sure did,” Lillian beamed, but then grimaced, glancing down at the cracked crate. Their voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “ _ But at what cost. _ ” They let this statement linger for a while, before promptly going back to a more regular, cheery tone. “Seriously, though – if you’re looking for something, it’s my break now, I can help you hunt it down.” They extended their leg slightly, kneeling awkwardly on top of the broken crate, and waggled their eyebrows, striking a pose. “You don’t want to end up like me, do you?”

“Help would be great,” said Hitch, not reacting to the theatrics. “I’m trying to track down the catalogue of all sections of Spectrum 8 – a floor plan would be ideal.”

“Okay,” said Lillian, and pivoted, scanning the room. “You take that side, I take this side?”

The two of them began searching, pulling down boxes and flipping through filing cabinets. The room was on the dusty side, and it looked like nobody had been in there in months.

“Hey, I heard you were trying to reach me,” said Lillian after a few minutes of this. “Comms were down this morning, so I wouldn’t have picked up. Was it urgent or anything?”

Hitch had nearly forgotten his lie to LB, and he momentarily paused, hands hovering over a large box. “No, not really. In fact – if LB asks, just tell her we talked about it and it wasn’t important.”

Lillian gave him a sideways look that reeked of confusion and slight suspicion. “Wow, I thought communication was supposed to be key in maintaining a healthy relationship,” they deadpanned. “I wonder if Spectrum has marriage counselling?”

“We’ve met, what, twice?” Hitch returned. “And I’d hardly call mission briefings  _ dates _ .”

“Eh, you’re not really my type,” Lillian laughed, and dropped another box on their unbandaged foot. Papers flew everywhere, and they swore again loudly, instantly bending down to start clearing it all up. “Goddammit – Internal Affairs is gonna be after me if they find out I was screwing with the records. Give me a hand, will you?”

Hitch obliged, reaching over to pick up the file that had scattered furthest away, which just so happened to be the one closest to him. He glanced at its cover, and his eyes widened. “Wh – I think this might actually have been what I was looking for?”

Lillian swivelled, head tilting curiously in his direction. “What, seriously?”

He held it out mutely.  _ Spectrum 8 – FULL FLOOR PLAN  _ was marked on the front in thick but neat black marker.

“Bring it here,” Lillian demanded instantly, swivelling their legs so they could sit in a more comfortable position on the floor. They usually were field agent, but Hitch had heard through the grapevine that they had been stuck on desk duty because of a gunshot wound to the leg – not a very interesting job, even at the best of times. They looked almost eager for a mystery or conspiracy.

He slid down to the floor next to Lillian, pulling the single item in the floor plan file out as he did so. It turned out to be a large, old-looking map – not exactly ancient, but definitely having existed for a few decades or so. It had been folded over so many times that it was just about as thick as a small book.

The two of them spread the map out on the floor between them, and it turned out to be so big that they had to scoot back a couple times as they did so. It really was an astounding map- it looked like it was perfectly to scale, and what was more, it was color coded in direct accordance to where everything was in real life. A rainbow of corridors spiralled across the paper, ever so slightly faded with time.

Lillian smoothed out the creases on the edges and frowned. “Okay, so what are we looking for? You never really said.”

“I’m looking for the black section of Spectrum,” Hitch said, already scanning the page.

“We  _ have  _ a black section?” Lillian sounded incredulous. “I’ve never seen that. Hell, I’ve never even  _ heard  _ of it.”

“Well, we have the white rooms,” Hitch said, pointing to the central part of Spectrum 8; the area that LB used as her private offices. “It’s only logical that we’d have the opposite end of the spectrum, right?”

“Ha,” Lillian said, wrinkling their nose. “Well, I guess that makes sense, in a weird and abstract color theory sort of way. And really, isn’t weird and abstract color theory what Spectrum’s all about?”

“Exactly,” Hitch said. “So let’s get looking.”

They scoured the map in silence, only broken by the occasional  _ aha!  _ from one of them _ ,  _ which was always inevitably followed by a noise of annoyance as they realized that it wasn’t actually what they were looking for.

Eventually Lillian spotted it – the dark grey splodges of ink edging into black at the very edge of the floor plan. It was so small that it could easily have been missed, and it wasn’t labelled clearly like the rest of the colors were. In tiny white print that you had to squint to read, it said this:

**ROOM 0.** **  
** **RESTRICTED.**


	9. Chapter Six: Saturday (1)

It was five in the morning the next day when Hitch returned to Indigo 223 to regroup with Blacker. He knew rationally that it probably would be a while before the code-breaker actually showed up – barely anybody had been in the corridors while he was coming in – but he didn’t exactly care about this.

The room was dark and silent until he switched on the lights, and even then it was eerily quiet. Hitch found himself stepping with more force than usual to make some sort of sound to fill the silence. As he crossed to the central table, he noticed that the shattered coffee cup from yesterday was still there in pieces on the ground.

He found a dustpan almost automatically, and started clearing it up, with a lack of anything else to do.

“Wow,” said Blacker, entering the room with a paper bag in his hand. “You really are a butler now, aren’t you?”

Hitch paused and frowned, vaguely annoyed. “Habit,” he explained aloud, but finished sweeping it up anyway. He stood up and brushed it all into the trash can, and came to join Blacker, who was pulling two donuts out of the bag he had carried in. He offered one to Hitch, who declined with a shake of his head.

“More for me,” Blacker shrugged, and got to work on eating it. Despite this flippancy, he looked tired – a bit more scruffy than usual, and he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Even his shirt – red with the words ‘ **IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK CODE** ’ printed across it  looked like it had been pulled on quickly and carelessly. The dry-cleaning tag that was still attached to the back was a testament to that. “Okay, what have you got?”

“Well, I think I’ve found the place.” Hitch placed the rough sketch that he made of the Spectrum floor plan on the table, indicating Room 0. “It’s a long shot, but I’d still say it’s the place.”

Blacker examined it, scattering crumbs everywhere as he did. “Yep, I’ve never even heard of this place,” he decided after a few minutes. “It sounds about right.”

Hitch sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Well, we can’t break in.”

“Normally I’d agree with you,” Blacker said. “But really, what else can we do at this point?”

Hitch shot him a sideways look. “You’re not seriously suggesting we break into what’s probably the best-kept secret vault to exist in Spectrum 8.”

“You’re assuming that there’s not any other, more secret vaults that we still don’t know about,” Blacker argued pointlessly, and then seemed to regain the gravity of the situation. “And you’re  _ right,  _ it would normally be a ridiculously stupid idea. LB would fire us on the spot if she knew we were even  _ considering  _ it.”

“Exactly,” Hitch said.

“But here’s the thing,” Blacker continued, leaning forward and studying his remaining donut with deep interest. “We’ve gotta stop looking at this from the point of view from two people who’ve been with Spectrum for  _ years, _ who’ve been through training. Because as great as Spectrum is, it tends to narrow your viewpoint a  _ lot. _ Instead, let’s consider this.” He spread his hands, as if about to deliver a thesis statement to a classroom full of university students. “What would Ruby do?”

Hitch crossed his arms, knowing the exact answer to this question almost instantly. “She’d break into the vault anyway with next to no thought for the consequences.” He paused. “And we’re almost certain she really  _ did  _ do that, so it’s not really the hardest question.”

“Right,” said Blacker. “And again, let me put it this way. If a teenage girl who hasn’t even passed training yet could break into Room 0 without getting caught or noticed, is there really any reason we couldn’t do the same thing?”

Hitch had to admit that Blacker made an extremely convincing argument, but had to put up one last word of protest. “Even if Ruby made it into that room unnoticed, you have to admit that it didn’t end up well for her.”

“Which is exactly why we gotta do it ourselves,” Blacker said, and pushed back from the table, gesturing at the t-shirt he was wearing- a present that Ruby had presented to him after asking various members of Spectrum when his birthday was and figuring out that she had missed it by a few weeks. Hitch could safely say that it was one of the most adorable things that he had ever seen happen within the walls of Spectrum.

**_IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK CODE,_** it said, and if that wasn’t some sort of sign, Hitch didn’t know what was.

“Okay,” he said, “so we’re going to break into our own organization’s high-security vault. How  _ exactly  _ are we going to manage that?”

Blacker grinned, although there wasn’t much joy in it, and took a bite out of his second donut.

“Very carefully, I’d say,” he said.

And that was how they ended up in the furthest corridors of Spectrum 8, trying to find a room that by most people’s standards did not exist. The colors slid from purple to grey, and that was a pretty good sign they were on the right track. The numbers on the doors were counting down as well- the most recent one they had passed was labelled  **_10_ ** and up ahead was  **_9,_ ** and beyond that  **_8_ ** and  **_7_ ** and so on.

Room 0 was at the end of a long series of twists and turns and false ends, and by the time that they got to that point, the walls and ceilings were properly black- a smooth, dark shade that hosted no imperfections, and was brought into sharp contrast by the shiny white floors. The hall was lit by tiny LED lights that had been set into the ceiling, giving it the feel of some sort of art gallery.

And the door itself was smooth and chrome without even a door handle. Set into the centre of it was a sort of indent that seemed to contain some sort of screen that had been turned off.

On an impulse, Hitch reached into his jacket and pulled out the infrared sunglasses that he had checked out from the gadgets room. He put them on, and held the switch on the side, scanning the area. For a moment, he couldn’t see anything except shades of red, but then he spotted it- a tiny, glowing fly, doodled on the wall under the numberplate.

“This is it,” he said, and lowered the sunglasses. He looked around again, this time without the aid of infrared, and saw what looked like a disc the size of button pressed into the ceiling. “And there’s the camera,” he added. “Looks like that long shot paid off.”

Blacker was already stepping up to the door, notebook in hand. “Let’s see what I can do with this.” He reached for the indent in the door, and before his fingers could even touch the screen, it began glowing cyan blue. He recoiled briefly, watching white words scroll across the screen.

“Okay, substitution cipher, easy,” he muttered, and keyed in a few numbers after barely a moment of hesitation. The screen flashed green, confirming that he was right.  “What else, what else-”

This time, several notes played, their pitch sharp in the relative silence of the corridor. They went on for half a minute, and then fell silent. Blacker’s expression dropped. “Oh jeez- I’m completely tone deaf. This isn’t good.”

“Play it again,” Hitch said. Blacker raised an eyebrow at this, but obliged. The notes rang out once more. “Try an F sharp?” he suggested.

“It’s asking for a number.”

Hitch ran through a chromatic scale in his head. “Seven.”

Blacker entered that, and the light flashed green once before returning to blue.

**BLACKER:** You’re right- thank god. How’d you know that?

**HITCH:** I happen to play the clarinet, lucky for us.

**BLACKER:** Huh, I wouldn’t have pictured you as a clarinet guy- but there you go. Looks like you’re full of surprises.

**HITCH:** I aim to please- although I dread to think what you’ll figure out about me next.”

**BLACKER:** Unless you had a secret career as a lion trainer before becoming an agent, I don’t think much can surprise me anymore.

**HITCH:** I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.

Blacker laughed, and turned back to the screen, reading the chemical formulas that had appeared there. “Looks like I need to balance these equations,” he said. “That seems almost too easy, to be honest.”

The first equation on the screen was a simple equation that any first-year chemistry student could tell you would make ammonia.

It took less than a few seconds for Blacker to correct this, turning it into:

The next equation was, if possible, even easier, and resulted in:

“They’re both done,” he said, stepping back, “but it’s still asking for a final product. Product of  _ what? _ ” He brought a hand to his mouth, biting down on his knuckles. “Final product, final product –  _ got it, _ add the two existing products together! Ammonia and Carbon Dioxide make Ammonium Carbamate!” He keyed in the formula, and the light flashed green. “Next–”

“That’s the Tap code,” Hitch said, recognizing the two-by-six grid with the indents that was displayed on the screen. “You guys called it a ternary code.”

Blacker nodded, even as he began to solve it in his head. “Now that you mention it – all of these codes. They seem to line up with our past major cases, don’t they?”

Hitch was silent for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I see what you mean. The code in the Mirror was a substitution cipher. There was the Chime Melody code, and then the chemical code based on the smells. This can’t be a coincidence.”

“Probably not,” Blacker agreed, punching in the final answer to the ternary code. “But if the pattern’s right, that means the next one’s gotta be–” The screen flashed green, and the next code appeared onscreen. “–  _ ha, _ tesseract, I knew it!” A smile curved across his face, and he looked almost childishly excited. “Bet you I can solve it in less than a minute.”

“That’d be good, we kind of  _ are  _ on the clock here,” Hitch said, checking his watch absently. It was 5.37, and also a Saturday – which meant that LB probably would be on her way to HQ already. It would be less than half an hour before she actually made it there, and even though it would be unlikely that she’d come looking for this place so early in the morning, Hitch still felt like it would be a good idea to get out of there before she even got the chance.

It took Blacker exactly 38 seconds to key in the points of the tesseract that corresponded to the parts of the formula, and almost immediately after the screen flashed green, another diagram showed up on screen.

“Ruby’s notebook,” said Hitch immediately, reading over Blacker’s shoulder. He nodded, and flipped it open – having been holding it loosely in one hand this entire time.

The dot diagrams covering those pages resembled the one on the screen, but none of them were exact copies. Blacker tried translating the dots into binary again, like he had the first time, but nothing of any use came up.

“Okay, any ideas?” he said after a few minute of no success. “You said she was researching. What, specifically?”

“She was especially interested in something called parity bits,” Hitch said after a brief moment of recollection. “Although I’m not sure if that helps–”

Blacker’s face lit up, and he leaned back in towards the screen, looking as if he was seeing it in a whole new light. “It  _ does,  _ believe it or not! Parity bits, of course, I can’t believe I missed that...”

Hitch glanced backwards suddenly. “I think someone’s coming,” he said lowly. “I’ll be right back – I might need to head them off, whoever they are.”

He quickly set off, leaving Blacker alone with a code and a locked door.

“Okay, Ruby, work with me here,” he muttered at the notebook, and began to piece together the parity code.

When working alone, Blacker tended to imagine that he was working with other people- he was a social person by nature, and it only seemed logical. Usually, he tended to bring up a mental simulation of Miles Froghorn, since he was one of the best people to bounce ideas off – real or not.

Today, however, he found himself bringing to mind Ruby Redfort, as he had last seen her while working on the tesseract puzzle – wearing casual clothes, most notably a shirt that bore the simple legend  **_NOPE_ ** on it. Her glasses were tucked into the front pocket of her jeans, and her arms were crossed as she leaned against the nearest dark wall.

“Still haven’t solved it yet?” she asked – or rather, he imagined her asking.

“Getting there,” he returned aloud, jotting down the combinations on the back of her notebook. “It’d probably be easier if you helped, though.”

“You  _ are _ using my notebook,” she pointed out. “I don’t know if I can help much more than that- you’ve got all the notes, man – you’ve just gotta put them together, you know?”

He hummed in acknowledgement as he figured out where the final missing dot should go. “Got it,” he exclaimed under his breath, grinning in triumph.

“Knew you could do it,” Ruby said.

He moved forwards to input the information into the system – but paused at the last moment, frowning.

“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked after a moment or so of this. “You don’t look as pleased as you should.” She stepped away from the wall.

“The door isn’t asking for a series of dots to fill in the missing pattern, it’s asking for a phrase- a single word,” Blacker said, and then it clicked. “–binary!”

“Binary,” Ruby suggested a split second after he had spoken, and instantly shrugged, not bothered at all by this. “Okay, so you beat me to it. Same conclusion, right? Use the binary stuff I wrote down to crack it, it’s not that hard. Even Froghorn could manage it, probably.”

“Already doing that, believe it or not.” Blacker had flipped to the page in the notebook with the list of binary strings that corresponded to letters, and was comparing them to the parity table.

“T,” Ruby read out loud as he converted each line. “W, O, F, A,C, E, and the last line doesn’t count because it’s parity.”

“Twoface,” Blacker said, and typed the word into the door.

“Twoface – what does that even mean?” Ruby was frowning, once again leaning against the wall.

“Does it matter at this point- the code’s solved. What LB uses for her passwords isn’t our business.”

“I think it kinda is,” Ruby pointed out, “seeing as we’re – or rather  _ you’re –  _ breaking past them. And it didn’t work.”

“What?” Blacker glanced up at the screen, and was annoyed to see that it was flashing red.  _ Password not accepted. Two attempts remaining.  _ “Oh, jeez. Okay, even if it wasn’t ‘TWOFACE’, it’s gotta be related to it in some way.”

“Twoface- what has two faces?”

“A traitor,” Blacker said instantly. He began to type the word ‘traitor’ in, before pausing. “Wait, no, too obvious. Anagrams, are there any anagrams for TWOFACE…  _ café two, we of act – cow tafe _ ? – no. There aren’t any relevant ones.”

“You’re overthinking it,” Ruby said.

“Yeah, that might be the stress.” Blacker ran a hand through his hair. “LB has a taste for the dramatic when it comes to making codes herself- she likes metaphors and wordplay. If I treat this like a crossword clue, then maybe… what has two faces, or is two-faced? Theatre masks – the ones for tragedy and comedy,” he answered himself.

“That’s true, but they don’t fit into one word,” said Ruby. “The masks don’t really have a specific name.”

“The names of the muses the masks were based on- Melpomeme and Thalia,” Blacker said.

“The door needs one word, and any single muse won’t fit the clue on its own.” Ruby snapped her fingers impatiently. “Come on, think  _ simple. _ ”

“Not muses, then…” he trailed off, and came to a new conclusion instantly. “What about gods?”

“What  _ about  _ gods?”

“There was a Roman minor god who had two faces,” he said, mind racing furiously. “It fits perfectly. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. The only problem – what’s his  _ name? _ ”

“Larinus. Vulcan,” Ruby suggested. “Hercules, Silvanus–”

“Ends with ‘us’,” Blacker said.

“Faunus? Orcus?” Ruby said, and then grinned suddenly. “Oh, right – it’s  _ obvious. _ ”

“Obvious isn’t a Roman god,” Blacker said.

“No, but the answer is.”

He looked up, and Ruby was standing only feet away – arms crossed and eyebrows raised. “Come on, you’ve got this,” she said. “Two-faced Roman god of doorways and choices, who could that be?”

“Janus,” said Blacker and Ruby smiled, just as quick footsteps echoed down the hallway leading to Room 0. Blacker turned quickly, not sure what he would do if it turned out to be somebody unwanted, but it was only Hitch.

“False alarm,” he reported. “How are you doing with that door?”

Blacker looked over at where he had imagined Ruby to be, but any trace of her was gone- he probably couldn’t conjure her up again if he tried.

“I think I’ve got it,” he said, and keyed  **JANUS** into the keyboard beneath the glowing blue screen. It flashed white instead of green this time, and gears could be heard shifting inside the door. After a brief second, a bell rang somewhere inside the room, and the door slid to the side with a pneumatic  _ hiss. _

There were no lights – the room was completely black.

Blacker stowed Ruby’s notebook in his pocket. “Ladies first,” he said, indicating the now-open doorway.

“Very funny,” said Hitch, and stepped through into Room 0.


	10. Chapter Seven: Saturday (2)

As Blacker entered behind Hitch, the lights came on. They were set into the space where the floor and the wall met, and lit up the room with bright white light. The walls were like that of the corridor outside; painted a plain matte black.

At the centre of the room was a small, ornately carved pedestal with a single file lying flat on top of it.

Hitch circled it twice, and came to a stop opposite the door.

“All my instincts are telling me not to pick that up,” Blacker said, staring at it suspiciously. “I think I’ve been watching too many late-night spy movies.”

“It  _ does  _ seem a bit convenient,” he agreed. “I don’t think we should be rushing into picking it up just yet.”

“Speaking of rushing in – how are we doing for time?” Blacker asked.

Hitch checked his watch. “5.51 – we should really get this done quickly.” He surveyed the room. “So, we’re in agreement that whatever’s in that file in the centre of the room, it’s  _ not  _ what we’re looking for?”

“That was my first thought, yeah.” Blacker started examining the walls, which were perfectly smooth, had no hidden compartments, and gave nothing away. “If you were LB, where would you hide the thing you wanted to hide most from everyone?”

**RULE 3:** **_People so often don’t see what’s right in front of their eyes._ **

“In plain sight,” said Hitch, and headed straight for the pedestal in the centre of the room. He ignored the file placed on top of it – going as far as to actively avoid touching it. Instead, he crouched down and gripped the pedestal itself in both hands. He twisted it, first clockwise and then when that didn’t work, in the opposite direction. It rotated smoothly, and after three turns he was able to pull it out of the ground altogether, revealing the hidden compartment underneath. Inside it was what looked very much like the real file.

“Nice work,” Blacker said, looking impressed. “How did you know that would be there?”

“I’ve known LB for years, decades even,” Hitch replied, pulling the file out and handing it to Blacker. “She’s always had a flair for the melodramatic – she hides it well, though.”

Blacker nodded, and regarded the file. It was unmarked, and looked perfectly ordinary. “If I move fast, I can get out, make a copy of everything, and put it back before 6.”

“That seems like a good course of action,” Hitch said, “although there’s the risk that LB might notice or check before you return. Maybe we should–” He cut himself off quickly, straightening up to stare at the open doorway. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Blacker tilted his head.

They had been faint before, but they were quickly getting louder, and by extension closer. They weren’t the crisp clicking of shoes on linoleum floor – they sounded more like bare feet.

Blacker and Hitch shared a quick, panicked glance. There was only one person who would be walking barefoot in Spectrum 8, and she was precisely the last person that they wanted to see at that moment.

Blacker was closest to the door, and he reacted first, heaving the door shut with a grunt. It closed with a slight hiss, and its internal workings clicked as the locking mechanisms engaged. After a few seconds, the room grew completely silent. Apparently it was effectively soundproof, since they couldn’t hear LB’s footsteps anymore.

“Oh, we are so screwed,” Blacker whispered, eyes wide.

Hitch reviewed their options very quickly. It was possible that LB wasn’t actually planning to enter Room 0, but that wasn’t actually very likely. If she had been close enough for them to hear her, then she was close enough that there wasn’t any other place she  _ could  _ have been heading. There was no place to hide in the room, and leaving certainly wasn’t an option either. Based on that, he decided that he completely agreed with Blacker’s sentiment.

Even though they could no longer hear anything from outside, it was still fairly obvious when LB began to open the door- they could hear the locks disengaging, one by one.

**HITCH:** Ideas would be welcome, you know.

**BLACKER:** Unfortunately, I’m all out at this point.

**HITCH:** Isn’t your job all about finding creative solutions to unorthodox problems?

**BLACKER:** Well,  _ yeah, _ but I’ve never exactly had to solve a locked-room puzzle while my boss accesses said locked room – which I might mention, we’re not supposed to be in! I’m more of a code-breaking guy.

The third lock beeped open, and Hitch was suddenly hit by a ridiculously stupid idea. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have even considered it, but at this point he was out of options.

He pulled up his sleeve, and began dialing LB’s number into his watch.

“ _ What are you doing, _ ” Blacker hissed, looking furiously between the door and Hitch.

There was a long pause, and for a second Hitch was worried she might not pick up, but then the line clicked, and the head of Spectrum 8’s gravelly voice echoed through the room. “This better be good, Hitch. I’m really quite busy right now.”

“It’s kind of urgent,” he said, intentionally quickening the pace of his speech. “Have you seen Lillian today?”

He could hear the frown in LB’s voice. “I just came in- I haven’t seen much of anyone yet. Why?”

“I think they might have gone off on their own to hunt the Count,” he said, silently apologizing to Lillian as he did so. “We were discussing the situation yesterday, and they said some things… I won’t bother you with the details, but from where I’m standing, it doesn’t sound good.”

“Does this really need my attention?” LB said, sounding irritated. “So they went off on their own – that happens a _ lot _ , if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Somebody sent me an anonymous tip,” Hitch said. “Lillian might be the mole.”

LB was silent. The door wasn’t unlocking any further, which was a good sign.

“ _ Today _ , of all days,” she muttered eventually, voice cracking ever so slightly that he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been paying attention. Hitch felt slightly guilty for lying to her, but not enough to admit to it. She cleared her throat, and her voice returned to its normal register. “Thank you for informing me. I’ll check up on this immediately.”

“I could be wrong,” Hitch said.

“I trust your instincts,” LB said curtly. Hitch felt another twinge of guilt. “I need to find Lillian now – I’ll call you back later when I’ve got an update.” The sound of LB walking briskly a few paces could be heard, and then silence as she hung up.

Blacker breathed out in amazed relief. “That was impressive.”

“I’m not quite done yet,” said Hitch, dialing another number as fast as he could. The line clicked, and then somebody picked up. “Hey, so, remember how you said you owed me one?” he asked without preamble.

There was a brief pause, and then Agent Lillian’s sigh rattled over the connection. “Goddamnit, Hitch, it’s six in the morning. What do you  _ need? _ ”

**HITCH:** Where are you right now?

**LILLIAN:** At home, in bed, like any sane person would be at this ungodly hour. Why, where are  _ you? _

**HITCH:** Somewhere I really shouldn’t be.

**LILLIAN:** Well, I’m exceedingly proud of you. Can I go back to bed yet?

**HITCH:** Probably not. You know that favour I mentioned?

**LILLIAN:** Yeah, what is it?

**HITCH:** LB might have just been informed, mistakenly, that you are in fact the mole that’s been passing information onto people outside of Spectrum. She also believes that at this current moment you’ve gone AWOL and rogue.

There was a brief pause in which Lillian proceeded to use every curse and dirty word at their disposal in English and several other languages in a very creative manner. This went on for several minutes.

**LILLIAN:** Hitch, what the  _ hell?  _ This isn’t a favour, this is cruel and unusual punishment!

**HITCH:** Look, I really am sorry about it. I needed a diversion and it was the first thing that came to mind.

**LILLIAN:** _ Bèn tiānshēng de yī duī ròu – _ you know what? Next time I need to clear up the files I knock over in the archive room, remind me to never ask you for help.

**HITCH:** All I need is for you not to mention that I was involved in this.

**LILLIAN:** That’s  _ all you need? _ Jeez, you don’t ask for much, do you?

**HITCH:** Lillian, please. I’ll make it up to you later, but this is serious.

Lillian paused, obviously thinking something over.

**LILLIAN:** Do my paperwork for the next month, and I won’t say a word.

**HITCH:** _ – _ fine.

**LILLIAN:** Make that two months, because I’m going to be stuck in red tape  _ hell _ , even when LB figures out it  _ isn’t  _ me that’s that mole. Also, you need to pay for dinner for Jamie and me – we’re going out next week, and I need it to be somewhere fancy.

**HITCH:** Is this really necessary?

**LILLIAN:** Don’t give me that – you were the one who decided that betraying me to my  _ own side  _ was a good idea.

**HITCH:** Point taken. Again, I’m sorry.

**LILLIAN:** _ (resigned)  _ Can I expect LB to come knocking at my door in the next half-hour, then?

**HITCH:** Less than, probably.

“Great,” they said. “I should get dressed, then. Might as well look good for when I’m arrested.”

“Thanks, Lillian,” said Hitch. “I’ll tell you the full story when everything’s over.”

“You’d better,” said Lillian darkly, and hung up.

Blacker whistled faintly, looking awestruck. “I can honestly say that was one of the most masterful bits of deception I have ever witnessed in my life.”

“We should have another hour or so before LB comes looking for me,” Hitch estimated with a glance at his watch, not really registering the praise. “Can you get the file copied and back to here before then?”

“Should be able to, yeah,” Blacker confirmed, tucking said file under his arm. “We can meet up afterward; look through it properly. Not in Spectrum, though,” he added, looking speculative. “We don’t want the wrong people walking in on us part-way through.”

“That’s true,” Hitch allowed. “How about Ruby’s house?”

Blacker looked almost startled for a moment. “Er, yeah, that works. I know where it is.”

“Good, I’ll see you there,” Hitch said, and paused at the door, seconds before pushing it open. “Do you think LB’s gone?”

“Well, let’s hope so,” Blacker said, almost a bit too cheerfully. “If she  _ isn’t _ , it would really defeat the point of everything we just did.”

Hitch managed a small smile, and pulled open the door anyway. There was a small hiss of air as the locking seal disengaged.

The hallway outside was completely empty.

They had gotten away with it.


	11. Almost at that exact moment...

...the call came in without warning, the loud ringing disturbing the otherwise silent room.

Lorelei was awake, however, and reached over to pick up the phone.

“Hello, sweetie,” purred the Australian. “You know I said I’d call.”

Lorelei fought the urge not to throw the phone as far away from her as possible, and instead settled for just wrinkling her nose in disgust. “This had better be good.”

“Oh, it is,” asked the woman with a grin in her voice. “Would you say that Ruby Redfort’s loyal to Spectrum?”

Lorelei was momentarily thrown by this seemingly random question. “I don’t know what you’re... yes, I guess she is. Why wouldn’t she be?”

The Australian laughed. Her voice had always been cold, and this sounded more like shattering glass than anything you’d actually recognize as proper laughter. “Think again. Little Ruby’s been a  _ naughty girl – _ stealing from her mother’s cupboard, and running away from home, no less!”

“Stop talking in riddles,” Lorelei growled, twisting the cord of the phone tightly around her finger. “What are you  _ talking  _ about?”

A dramatic sigh, rattling through the speaker like a snake hiss. “Oh, do I really need to spell it out for you, sweetie? Always so disappointing. Well, let me put it this way – Ruby’s gone rogue. AWOL. Left the premises of Spectrum, gone off to fight the forces of evil all on her lonesome.”

“Were  _ you  _ always this dramatic?” Lorelei cut across the Australian. “Or have you been spending more time with the Count lately?”

The Australian’s tone instantly became more clipped, tinged with resentment. “Shut up, sweetie – focus on the point. You  _ did _ understand the point, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.” Lorelei reached across into her bag, and pulled out a bottle of perfume – the only perfume she ever considered worth owning. She toyed with the familiar weight of it in her hand for a moment. “So Redfort’s gone off- what, to anywhere in particular?”

“Our mole wasn’t specific,” replied the older woman. “But I think we can make a guess, can’t we?”

“You’re right. It’s obvious.” Lorelei sprayed a tiny amount of the perfume into the air in front of her, and smiled as the fragrant scent of Turkish Delight filled the air. “So we can assume that she’s not going to come back.”

The smile was back in the Australian’s voice once more. “Well, I’d  _ hate  _ to make premature assumptions – but no, I don’t think little Ruby Red’s gonna be coming back alive.”

“That is the first proper bit of good news you’ve ever told me in my life,” Lorelei told her frankly.

“It is, isn’t it,” the Australian agreed. “Well, let’s hope this doesn’t become a pattern.”

She hung up, leaving Lorelei alone in a room that smelled just as sweet as her mood was at that very moment. She slowly began to grin. Ruby Redfort was probably dead, and if she wasn’t yet, she soon would be. That was enough to make her day entirely – she felt like celebrating.

She reached across to take out her makeup bag, which was draped over the back of a nearby chair. Even as she began to take out the tools of her trade, she was plotting out the face that would disguise her own on her afternoon trip out.


	12. Chapter Eight: Saturday (3)

“There’s some good news and some bad news,” Blacker said when they were settled in the Redfort’s empty kitchen some time later. “What do you want first?”

“The bad news, I guess,” Hitch said, frowning.

“Right, that. So,” he splayed out the copies he had made on the table in front of them. There were maybe ten sheets of paper – nowhere as many as Hitch was expecting. “It looks like somebody who went in there before us – maybe Ruby, maybe somebody else – didn’t bother going for stealth when they found the information.”

“What?”

“There’s about four pages of information that this file is missing,” Blacker explained. “Somebody just straight up went and took it out of there – god knows where it is now.”

“I think I want the good news now,” Hitch said.

“Sorry,” said Blacker, “I was actually lying about that bit. There’s no good news, only more bad news. Want to see it?”

“Not especially,” Hitch said.

Blacker held up a part of the file that had a section highlighted bright yellow. “Well, that’s just too bad – you kinda need to read this.”

Hitch sighed, and reached for it. The highlighted section covered the top part of the page, and began mid-sentence.

–  **_in addition to the true identity of Victor Von Viscount, commonly known as simply ‘the Count’ –_ **

“Hold up,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the page to look at Blacker. “He has a  _ true identity? _ What is it?”

“No clue,” Blacker admitted. He was now slouching in his chair, arms crossed on the table and head lying at an angle on top. “That page actually happens to be missing, and it’s not mentioned anywhere else in the document.” He made a  _ keep going  _ motion with his hands, and Hitch did.

–  **_in addition to the true identity of Victor Von Viscount, commonly known as simply ‘the Count’, the location of the area where he has been keeping himself hidden in Twinford has been redacted from all Spectrum systems. This information, although highly classified, can be found in Sub-File C…_ **

Hitch read on, but it was mostly administrational information in that section. He put it aside. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that Sub-File C is missing as well.”

“Got it in one.”

“But presumably LB’s read this file before,” Hitch said, “so she would have known about all of this… wait, LB knew that the Count’s identity and location had been redacted? And she didn’t do  _ anything  _ about it?”

“It’s worse than that, actually,” Blacker said, pushing the cover page of the file towards him. “LB was the one that authorized the redaction in the first place.”

Hitch’s first instinct was to deny this, but the signature across the front of the front of the information redaction form was indisputably LB’s – even having the same weight to the penstrokes as it usually did. If it was a forgery, then it was one of the best he’d ever seen.

“Right,” he said eventually, choosing not to dwell too hard on these slightly disturbing revelations. “Are there any  _ other  _ bombshells you want to drop on me today?”

Blacker appeared to seriously consider this question, and after a second he shook his head. “Not really, no. You can read through the file yourself, but I wouldn’t really call anything else in there important.”

At this point, Bug entered the room, evidently summoned by the sound of an unfamiliar voice. As Hitch began to read from the beginning, the huskie hovered around the doorway, looking wary.

“I don’t think I’ve had the time to feed Bug today,” Hitch said absently, eyes not leaving the page. “The food’s in the cupboard, would you–?”

“Sure,” said Blacker, and got up to do that. He ruffled Bug’s fur as he passed him, and the dog’s tail wagged happily. Blacker had evidently made a new friend.

“You’re right,” said Hitch about fifteen minutes later, stacking everything back into the folder. “It’s kind of interesting, but nothing there is what you could really call ‘useful’.”

Blacker sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I got out of it too.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Back to square one, I guess.”  He indicated all of their findings so far. “Do you mind if I take these back home to work through them again?”

“Hey, I’m not stopping you,” Hitch said.

“Great.” Blacker found a scrap of paper somewhere in his pockets, and quickly scribbled down an address in Downtown Twinford. He pushed it towards Hitch. “If you need to get me. I’d stay here and do it, but – I don’t know.” He frowned. “It feels kinda wrong to be in this house at the moment. It’s just so... empty, I guess.”

“I know what you mean,” Hitch replied, tucking the address away. “Do what you gotta do.”

Blacker nodded, and gathered up his things. “Bye, Bug,” he addressed to the huskie with a friendly scratch behind the ears, and then he was out the door and he was gone.

* * *

 

Later that afternoon, Hitch received a call from a very exhausted-sounding Agent Lillian.

“So I’m on probation,” they announced without preamble. “And I feel like it’s worth mentioning that despite all this, I haven’t blabbed to LB.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Hitch said. “Do you want me to apologize again? Because I really am sorry – if there was any other way –”

“No, no, I get it,” Lillian dismissed, sounding as if they were waving a hand through the air. “I don’t necessarily  _ like  _ it, but I get why you did it. And that wasn’t actually why I was calling.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. LB handled the interrogation herself, see- and we both know that’s pretty unusual.”

“Not really, she  _ did  _ think you were the mole,” Hitch pointed out.

“Yeah, but I’m low-level in the big scheme of things, there actually wasn’t any concrete evidence to  _ suggest  _ I was, and I hadn’t done a runner, like you told  her I had. She could have easily delegated it off to, say, Froghorn or somebody. And we still haven’t got to the interesting part yet.”

“So get to it,” Hitch said, not entirely impatiently.

“Right. Well, she didn’t actually ask as many questions about me being a mole as you would expect. They were actually more centered around the Count – what I knew about him, what I had been doing related to him, that sort of stuff.”

“Huh, that  _ is  _ kind of weird,” he allowed.

“That isn’t the half of it,” they said. “Before she wrapped up with me, the last question she asked was if I knew anything about a place called ‘Room 0’.”

This made Hitch raise his eyebrows. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t – I played dumb. That’s something else you owe me for, by the way.”

“I appreciate it,” he said honestly. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“No problem,” said Lillian. “Remember – two months of paperwork.”

“How could I forget,” he sighed, and prepared to hang up.

“Wait –” they said, just before he could. “One other thing.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“LB,” said Lillian, with no trace of playfulness in their voice anymore. “Can I trust her?”

Hitch paused for a very long moment.

“I wouldn’t say that she’s the bad guy,” he said, choosing his words very carefully. “But… I’d watch my back around her.”

“Okay,” said Lillian. “Thanks for telling me. Talk to you later, Hitch.”

“Bye,” he said automatically, and they hung up.


	13. Chapter Nine: Saturday (4)

Ruby’s room was just as dark and messy as it had been the last time Hitch had been there. He switched on the light, and only just managed to catch himself before he tripped over one of the numerous novelty telephones that scattered the room.

He manoeuvred his way to the bed, sat down, and glanced around the room. He had no solid reason to be in here, having already searched the entire area twice with no results. But at this point there was nothing left he  _ could _ do to help.

He picked up one of the numerous whodunnits Ruby was so fond of- this one was entitled ‘ **_THE SECRET OF THE SCREAMING BOOKKEEPER_ ** ’ and read through the first couple of pages before flipping straight to the end.

“Knew it,” he said, and placed the book back on the shelf. 

He ran his fingers along the spines of the ones on the level of the shelf he was at, stopping when he got to the end where a pair of sunglasses had been put into use as an impromptu bookend. He stared at them for a moment. Unlike the ones he had borrowed from Spectrum, they appeared to be perfectly ordinary sunglasses, like the type you would use on a very sunny day. Despite that, they had served to remind him of something.

He pulled out his own pair of sunglasses – the ones set to scan at infrared frequencies- and put them on, activating them. It took only a quick glance around the room to see what had previously been hidden.

There was a tiny drawing of a fly on the wall closest to the door and under that, a short, handwritten message- both of them glowing faintly. Hitch moved closer to read it properly.

_ If I’m not back by Friday, look in here. Sorry about everything. ~ Ruby _

There was an arrow as well, pointing towards the doorjamb. Hitch wasted no time prying it open, and was entirely unsurprised to find that the hidden compartment within contained a single yellow notebook, labelled with the number 625.

He let out a sort of half-laugh of relief, sliding down the wall with it in his hands. She hadn’t taken it with her, thank  _ god. _ Hopefully now he’d be able to find out something about what was really going on here.

He flipped it open to the first page, and started reading.

_ Monday morning. _ _ Backtracking a bit. Somebody had taken a lot of information from Room 0 before I even got there, but there was enough left that I could find what I was looking for. Namely, the location of where the Count’s hiding. I’m heading out there this morning – I’m not going in though, not yet. This is just a reconnaissance mission. _

_ I haven’t told Clancy yet. I don’t think I should. _

_ Monday afternoon. _ _ Turns out I couldn’t get in even if I wanted to. The entrance would have been hard to find without GPS, but I did get there eventually. It’s completely sealed –  _ _ totally _ _ sealed. I can’t see how the  _ _ Count _ _ gets in. _

Underneath this was pretty much the exact same diagram that she had drawn for Cogan.

_ I asked SJ to analyse some rock samples from there. I don’t know how much it’ll help, but it’s worth a try. I’ll sleep on it, I guess. _

_ Tuesday morning. _ _ Looks like SJ won’t get back to me on the samples for a while, but I think I’ve found another approach. There’s a retired architect in Twinford who might be able to help me with getting into the Count’s hideout. _

_ Tuesday, 12am _ _.  SUCCESS! We can get in. Now to wait until Hitch gets back- I think he’ll want to hear this. _

The entry for  _ Tuesday afternoon _ was a copy of the weather forecast for the upcoming week. The forecast for the evening that Wednesday had been circled twice in red marker.

Hitch began to get a sinking feeling in his stomach. He flipped the page.

_ Wednesday. _ _ I know who the Count is. _

_ I can’t wait any longer _

And that was it. There were no other entries, in invisible ink or otherwise, and it seemed as if that was all Ruby had to say on that matter and any other.

He dialled a number into his watch, and Blacker picked up instantly. Despite the late hour, he sounded as if he were wide awake. “What – what is it?”

“I found the last notebook,” Hitch said shortly. “Coming over now.”

“That’s good,” said Blacker, “but it’s almost midnight. I’ve heard sleep is helpful to maintaining a healthy body.”

The corner of Hitch’s mouth twitched. “And yet, you’re still awake.”

There was only a very slight delay between this and Blacker’s response. “All right, point made. See you soon.”

“Right,” said Hitch, laughing, and hung up.

* * *

 

It was slightly after midnight by the time that Hitch arrived at Blacker’s apartment, and yet Blacker didn’t appear any more tired than usual when he answered the door, although he had changed into looser clothes and was now barefoot.

“Hey,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, and gestured towards the inside of his flat, stepping back slightly. “Come on in. Sorry about the mess.”

“Ruby’s room is almost definitely worse,” Hitch said, stepping past Blacker, who closed the door behind the two of them and crossed the room to sit next to the coffee table.

As it turned out, Hitch’s causal assessment of the cleanliness of Blacker’s home was pretty accurate – it  _ was  _ messy, but it looked like he had at least put some modicum of effort into making sure that he wouldn’t trip over something every couple of steps he took.

“You said you had found her last notebook?” asked Blacker after they had settled themselves on either end of the old-looking couch that took up most of the tiny room.

“It was hidden in a different spot to the others,” Hitch said, passing it over.

Blacker read it through, and when he looked up, his eyes were practically glowing. “You know what this means?”

“When we find Ruby, she’s going to be grounded for the rest of her life?” Hitch said, only half-joking.

Blacker grinned. “Hah. No, but really – I think we might be able to track her down now!”

“What do you mean?”

“Hang on a minute,” he said, getting to his feet, and he disappeared through one of the doors leading to the rest of the apartment. He returned a few minutes later, shaking out a large map of Twinford and the surrounding area. “Help me pin this to the wall.”

The map took up most of the far wall of the room, which wasn’t saying much considering just how small the room was. After pinning down the final corner and securing it with sticky tape, Hitch stepped back. “Okay. Now what?”

“Now, we narrow it down.” Blacker consulted the notebook. “Okay, Ruby left on Wednesday, and it was raining heavily then. How far could she have gotten in two to three days?”

Hitch frowned at the map, and weighed it up in his head, before reaching out and drawing a circle with his finger that encapsulated most of Twinford, leaving a couple of kilometres spare at the edges. “She  _ did  _ leave her bike behind,” he reasoned. “But she also probably had the Sonic Umbrella, since I didn’t spot that in her room when I looked.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” Blacker uncapped a marker and drew a red line that matched what Hitch had sketched out invisibly. “What else–? What places are flat-out inaccessible to anybody at all,  _ including _ Ruby?”

“There’s not many places like that,” Hitch said, and then realized something. He pointed to the west of the town, where the land met the ocean. “Anywhere in the water. She wouldn’t have decided to go out specifically in the middle of a rainstorm if the location was in the water.”

“That makes sense as well.” Blacker marked that off, then snapped his fingers, coming to a realization. “Wait, but she found rock samples, right? That means that most of downtown and Chinatown are off the list, they’re literally all concrete. We’re looking for areas with high concentrations of granite- that’s what the chem lab said.”

“Granite,” Hitch muttered, and shifted his attention to the uppermost part of the map, where the mountains and woodlands resided. “We’re looking for granite- at a guess, that’d be in the mountains, right?”

Blacker looked puzzled. “You know, I honestly don’t know.” He turned to the nearest bookshelf, and started pulling books off it, throwing some of them onto the couch. The majority of them appeared to be about Twinford history and agriculture, and Hitch had to wonder why Blacker had any of them on his bookshelves in the first place. “Start looking for rock composition charts. Also – temperature!”

“Temperature?” Hitch asked, flipping to the index of the first book in the pile. He scanned it, saw nothing, and moved onto the next.

“The diagram she did, the one that she left with Cogan,” Blacker said, looking distracted as he moved to another bookshelf. “The opening of the Count’s place – it depends on temperature. We gotta see the area where any place could get to a point that cold or hot.”

It took nearly an hour of work to find the diagrams and charts that they needed for their task, and after that it was a simple matter of comparing those maps with the maps they had, and making notes of what places fit their criteria. The higher up in elevation you got, it seemed, the lower the temperature seemed to drop. The problem was finding a place that had the property of being very hot- hot enough to be sealed – at some points of the day, and very cold at others.

They had narrowed it down to about five areas, all located in the mountains that loomed above Twinford, but there wasn’t very much evidence to prove that one was more likely above all the others. Nevertheless, they had stuck a pin into the central point of each area, and begun the long, arduous process of figuring out exactly which one it was.

The turning point came when Blacker began reading through a book on local geography, and noticed a section about one particular mountain.

“Hey,” he said, and Hitch took a brief break from plotting heat maps in a notebook to glance over at him.

“What is it?”

“It might be nothing, but,” he frowned, “there’s a particular quirk of Great Bear Mountain that makes it retain heat a lot more than any other mountain in the area would.”

Hitch froze. “That’s it. It’s gotta be.”

The one pin located on Great Bear Mountain was bright red and placed right between its two uppermost peaks – because that was where its accessibility ended, and where it was possible for the temperature to drop the lowest.

He glanced over at the clock. It was just past five in the morning.

He looked at Blacker and Blacker looked back at him.

“Let’s go,” Hitch said.


	14. Chapter 10: Sunday (1)

Blacker made them stop for a quick breakfast, but after that Hitch drove up Main Street until hitting 72 nd , and from then headed directly into the mountains, moving from Mountain Road and parking at the end of Lake Road, where it trailed off into an empty dirt parking lot. It wasn’t too far from the Wichitino Camp, looking to be only an hour’s walk from where they were to Great Bear Mountain’s base.

“Here we are,” he said, parking with a spray of gravel. “We need to walk from here, there’s no way I’m taking this car up the mountain.”

“Should’ve brought my motorbike,” Blacker grumbled good-naturedly, climbing out. He brushed the crumbs of the pastry he had been eating off his jacket, and surveyed the mountain that loomed vaguely in the distance. “We’d better get walking, then.”

Fortunately, they had both brought footwear appropriate for hiking, and it actually only ended up taking about half the time that they had expected to reach the base of the mountain. It was also a fairly mild day, which was definitely a bonus – not too much sun, and no rain at all.

Climbing the mountain itself was a different matter. It wasn’t so hard for Hitch, who was used to that sort of thing, being a field agent and all. Blacker, who worked primarily from his desk most of the time, was putting up a good fight but was clearly struggling, especially when they reached the off-path area of the mountain.

“Need a break?” Hitch said after debating whether to say anything aloud or not.

“If you don’t mind,” Blacker said, looking relieved, and the two of them sat down on some conveniently placed logs for a few minutes. “Have you seen anything with those glasses?”

“I haven’t checked,” Hitch said, pulling out the sunglasses, and scanning around for a few seconds. “–no, nothing. Although that’s probably not surprising.” He tapped his foot against the log he was sitting on. “We’re nearly there, I think.”

“Well, let’s keep going.”

Five minutes later, they arrived at the top of Great Bear Mountain. It wasn’t the largest of the mountains that towered over Twinford – that dubious honor going to Wolf Paw Mountain, on top of which Ruby had, only a few months ago, almost died. The view from the top of the mountain provided them with a lovely aerial perspective of the forests below, and in the distance they could make out the streets of Twinford.

However, there was no hidden entrance in obvious sight.

“Okay,” said Hitch after donning the sunglasses, looking around, and finding no hidden messages, “so let’s get looking.”

Blacker, predictably, was the one to find the first sort of hint to the entrance’s whereabouts, and he did so by almost literally falling onto it.

“ _ Heck! _ ” he yelped, rolling away from the rock that he had fallen over. “Oh  _ no- _ “

“You okay?” Hitch asked, mildly concerned but also secure in the knowledge that Blacker wasn’t making quite as much noise as he would if he had broken something.

“I’m fine – that’s not the point,” Blacker said, catching his breath and moving to an upright, kneeling position. “But, I think I’ve found Ruby’s glasses.”

Hitch hurried over, and joined Blacker in staring down at the dirt where the mangled remains of what looked very much like the glasses that Ruby usually wore. They looked like somebody had stepped on them – the arms were twisted and bent, and both glass lenses were shattered, the glittering shards crushed into the ground and scattered over the dirt.

“Jesus,” Hitch muttered unhappily after a moment. “Sometimes I really hate being right.”

“She was up  _ here, _ in the  _ rain, _ without her  _ glasses? _ ” Blacker said, looking horrified.

“She has contact lenses with her, usually,” Hitch said. “And besides- they were probably the least of her problems, if she was out looking for the  _ Count. _ ”

Blacker sighed. “Yeah, I was trying to forget that, actually.” He plucked the battered wire frame from the ground, and tucked it into his pocket, but there was nothing to be done about the actual glass – it was simply too broken to consider cleaning up. “If her glasses are here, then the entrance should be nearby.” He scanned the area, and then his eyes lit up. “Hey, there’s a cave right there. Do you think–?”

Hitch was already moving. “I think it’d be stupid not to check it out.”

The cave was more of a natural shelter – a place where the rock of the mountain curved into an overhang, creating a sort of rocky umbrella that you could stand under. It was unlikely that anybody would go into it unless they were looking specifically for it, though; quite apart from that fact that Great Bear Mountain was hardly ever scaled by hikers and mountain climbers, the overhang was positioned rather awkwardly and out of the way. Hitch had to duck his head to get underneath, but the uncomfortable placing was well worth it.

There, set firmly into the rock, was a smooth, unmarked metal disc with a handle spanning its centre.

Hitch, on a whim, scanned the disc with the infrared sunglasses, and was rewarded with another small, glowing doodle of a fly that had been sketched on the rock nearby.

“Found it!” he called out to Blacker, who joined him in the overhang a few seconds later. The two of them peered at the metal disc, and Blacker pulled out a flashlight so he could examine it in more detail.

“Looks like the diagram,” he said. “Do you think we can–?” He reached up, almost experimentally, and attempted first pulling the metal disc down, and then twisting it. Neither way worked, and he shrugged almost fatalistically before letting Hitch try.

Hitch didn’t have much more luck – it seemed like the metal was actually welded into its setting somehow, or maybe it had expanded so tightly that it was impossible to budge. It was also hot to the touch, but not uncomfortably so – almost like it had been sitting out in the sun for hours.

“No good,” he said, stepping back and sighing. “Looks like it’s too hot already. When does the temperature drop?”

Blacker’s eyes darted sideways, and he bit his lip, recalling information. “Tonight, unless there’s a dramatic weather shift. I’d say about six, six-thirty?”

Hitch stared unhappily at the entrance. It was almost ironic that they were the closest they had ever been to actually finding Ruby, and yet the one thing stopping them from doing so was a single piece of circular metal. “There’s no other options?”

“Well, we could always break out the liquid nitrogen,” Blacker said speculatively. “Although there’s no guarantee that that would even  _ work, _ and it might even lock us out permanently.”

“Sledgehammer,” Hitch suggested.

“You want to drag one up here, I’m not stopping you,” said Blacker, and shook his head. “Seriously, though, I think our best bet is waiting until it’s colder. That way we can get backup – we can get a helicopter, maybe, it’ll make getting up here in the first place a lot easier.”

“LB,” Hitch countered.

Blacker ducked out from under the overhang so he could stand up properly. He stared at Hitch as he did the same, and eventually crossed his arms, looking mildly annoyed. “You know, there’s a lot of people in Spectrum who are fond of Ruby. Kekoa, Sam, SJ – just to name a few.”

“I know that,” Hitch said. “What about it?”

“So,” said Blacker, “I’m sure quite a few of them would be willing to go behind LB’s back for Ruby’s sake – for one night, anyway.”

Hitch maintained eye contact with Blacker for a full ten seconds before looking away. “You’re right,” he said.

Blacker looked surprised and slightly pleased. “I am? Oh, good.”

Hitch passed a hand over his eyes, sighing. “Sorry, I’m pretty tired at the moment, I’m not thinking too clearly. Okay, here’s what we’ll do. When we get back down to Twinford, you can start gathering up people to come with us. Try to avoid LB.”

“That’s a given,” Blacker agreed. “But what about you?”

“Well, I’m gonna try to get Zuko onboard, so we’ll have a helicopter,” Hitch said. “But first – I have an errand to run.”

* * *

 

There were five kids sitting in the Donut Diner, and all but one were drinking hot chocolate.

“Cheer up, Clancy,” Elliot said, “I’m sure she’ll show up at some point.”

“She’d  _ better, _ ” muttered Del Lasco, sounding ever so slightly homicidal. She took a pointed sip of her hot chocolate and winced as the burning liquid scalded her throat. “She’s missed two games in the last month – any more and I’m tempted to just kick her off the team for  _ good. _ ”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Red said, laughing and knocking over her own cup. Fortunately, none of it spilled on her, but it did end up covering most of the table and causing the other kids to yelp and scoot backwards to avoid getting covered in cocoa.

Clancy absentmindedly pushed the napkins over to Red, who started spouting apologies as she began to mop up the mess.

“Yeah,” he muttered at regular intervals to make it sound as if he was actually contributing as the conversation wound on without him, staring out the window.

He froze as he saw a familiar car pull up across the street outside, and saw an even more familiar person climbing out.

“Uh, guys?” he said, standing up very suddenly. “I’ve just remembered, I’ve gotta go do a thing, I’ll be right back – promise!”

“You just  _ got  _ here,” Elliot complained, but Clancy was already abandoning his hot chocolate in order to get outside as quickly as he could. He jogged across the street and practically sprinted towards the car.

“Well?” he said, skidding to a halt in front of Hitch, who looked faintly surprised that Clancy had arrived there so fast.

“Have you  _ found her, _ ” Clancy demanded, after Hitch didn’t respond for half a minute. “Have you got her  _ back? _ ”

“Not yet,” Hitch said reluctantly. “Sorry, kid.”

Clancy’s face crumpled, then went impressively blank almost instantly. “Okay. Fine. Why are you here, then?”

“We haven’t  _ found _ her, per se,” Hitch corrected himself, “but we’ve made progress, lots of it. We’re close, kid, real close – we’re going in tonight. Hopefully Ruby will be back tomorrow. I thought you’d want to know.”

This was probably meant to be comforting, or even helpful, but Clancy looked even more terrified than before. “Going  _ in _ ? Going in  _ where-  _ what do you mean  _ hopefully? _ ”

“Ruby found the Count’s main base of operations,” Hitch said, attempting to explain, “and we tracked it down too, but it’s taking a little while to get inside. We can’t do it until tonight, but we think-”

“I have no idea of anything that’s going on right now,” Clancy said, face tight with emotion. “For  _ days  _ I’ve been constantly worrying – I don’t even know if my best friend is alive or not right now, and  _ nobody’s told me anything.  _ How do you think  _ I feel? _ ”

“I’m really sorry,” Hitch said quietly. “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Let me come,” Clancy said. “Wherever you’re ‘going in’ tonight, let me come along with you, and – and, I don’t know,  _ help _ . I can be useful and I won’t get in the way, I promise.”

Hitch looked at Clancy, whose face was open and desperate, and felt a pang of sympathy for the kid. But nonetheless –

“Getting one kid involved in this was a mistake,” he said. “It’s not gonna be safe, Clancy. Do you think Ruby would want you to get yourself killed?”

“I think we’ve already proven that Ruby has terrible judgement,” Clancy snapped. “Unless you suddenly think that going off to confront the Count on her own was a  _ good  _ idea?”

“Nobody’s saying that,” Hitch said, regretting this already. “But Ruby had agent training-  _ has  _ agent training, and you don’t. She’s more equipped for this situation, you know that. Besides,” he added, a thought occurring to him, “there’ll be agents  _ everywhere. _ How am I supposed to explain the fact that you’re there to twenty-plus Spectrum agents.”

Clancy glared at him then – a full-fledged, angry glare that would be terrifying coming from anybody older and more intimidating. “Fine,” he said.

“I’ll let you know what happens,” Hitch said. “You’ll be the first to know.”

“Yeah,” Clancy said, and sighed, uncoiling a bit. “Sorry. It’s just – well, you know.”

“I get it,” Hitch said, and he did.

“Hey!” called a voice from across the street, and both Clancy and Hitch turned to see Del Lasco standing in front of the Double Donut Diner, waving furiously. “Hey, you’re the Redfort butler, aren’t you?”

“House manager!” Hitch called back automatically.

Del crossed the empty street at a brisk walk. “So it  _ is  _ you!” she said, getting closer. “Listen, I don’t know what’s been going on with Redfort, but tell her that if she doesn’t get her butt down to the basketball court this Saturday, she’s off the team for  _ good. _ Gone. Bam. Done. Finished.” She made a motion with her hands reminiscent of an explosion.

“She’s been sick,” said Hitch before Clancy could say anything. “It’s definitely not her fault, but I’ll let her know.”

Del glared, clearly suspicious, but nodded grudgingly just as Elliot, Red and Mouse approached as well. “Good.”

“Ruby’s  _ sick? _ ” Elliot asked. “Well,  _ that  _ explains a lot.”

“Yeah. Gotta go,” said Hitch, glancing at Clancy. “I’ll tell Ruby you all said hi.”

“Great, thanks!” Elliot said over Del’s vague mumble of ‘tell her I said to  _ stop getting sick _ ’, and with that, Hitch got back into his car and drove off, leaving the kids standing on the pavement.

“What a weird guy,” Red commented, and Del nodded in wholehearted agreement. Clancy felt no inclination to defend him at that point in time.

“Maybe we should go over to her place, say hi,” Mouse suggested, and when everybody else started to make noises of agreement, Clancy felt obliged to step in.

“I don’t think so,” he said, and everybody turned to look at him. “Well, if she’s too sick to call us and tell us that herself, do you really think she’d want visitors?” he justified. “Sounds pretty bad to me.”

Elliot and Del exchanged unsure glances.

“Well, I guess…” Red said. “But her parents aren’t home, are they? And neither is her housekeeper.”

“Yeah, imagine being in that huge house with nobody except that weird butler dude for company,” Elliot said.

“He’s not that bad,” Clancy said, meaning it.

“Really.” Del seemed unconvinced.

“Yeah, really – he and Ruby are thick as thieves, he’d never hurt her.”

Red looked like she was going to say something for a moment, but then she sighed. “Well, you  _ are _ her best friend. I guess you know best.”

“Yeah,” Clancy sighed. “I really hope so.” He bundled his scarf tighter around his face, so only his nose and above were showing.

It really was an inordinately cold day.


	15. And somewhere else entirely...

...Lorelei Von Leyden was sitting at the window of a small café, waiting for her latte to arrive and looking outward onto the semi-busy street. Today, she had curly blonde hair that bounced around her shoulders, and freckles that gently peppered her nose and cheeks. This disguise might not have been entirely necessary, but she felt it was a good precaution to take, considering the circumstances.

She eyed a child that was preparing to cross the road, and a thought popped into her head- if the child crossed at the wrong time, and got hit by a car in the process, she would laugh out loud. She might even be genuinely pleased about it.

“Your latte, darling,” said somebody behind her, and Lorelei reached over to take the hot cup without thinking about it, and then she  _ froze –  _ fingers still outstretched- as she smelled cinnamon and ashes. She flung herself out of her chair, moving into a defensive position as she swivelled to face the Australian.

“What are you  _ doing _ here?” she snarled. “I don’t want you near me- why don’t you just leave me alone?”

The Australian mock-pouted at her, lowering the still-steaming cup of coffee that she had been offering to the other woman. “And here I thought this would be a lovely place for our little catch-up.” She pulled over a chair from another table, and sat down, opposite from where Lorelei had been previously. She set the latte down, and looked up at Lorelei expectantly. “Well- won’t you join me, sweetie?”

Lorelei didn’t move. “If this is about what I said on the phone –”

The Australian looked puzzled for a brief moment, and then laughed. “Oh,  _ that? _ It hadn’t even crossed my mind. Oh no – this is about something  _ far  _ more important. Sit down.” The last bit wasn’t even slightly phrased as a request – it was undeniably an order.

Reluctantly, Lorelei sat. She eyed her coffee longingly for a moment, but decided against drinking it – too risky, now that the Australian had been near it. “Just get it over with.”

“So eager to get rid of me,” she sighed, “kids these days. Alright then.” Her tone went serious. “If that’s what you want, I’ll keep it brief. Bradley Baker.”

“What about him,” said Lorelei.

“Do me a favour and summarize everything you know about him.”

Lorelei rolled her eyes. “He was the ‘greatest agent in Spectrum history’, there was a plane crash, he’s dead now. What else is there to know?”

“For starters, he might not actually be dead.” The Australian leaned across the table, and snagged the handle of the coffee cup that Lorelei had refused to touch. She raised it to her lips, and took a sip. When she placed it back down, there was a smear of lipstick on the rim.

“What,” said Lorelei flatly.

“I mean what I said,” she replied. “New information’s come into light.”

“But, if he’s alive, that means-” Lorelei’s mind was whirling. “It means that just killing  _ Redfort  _ won’t be enough. We’ll need to kill Bradley Baker – the  _ legendary  _ Bradley Baker- before he finds the machine.”

“Kill him again,” said the Australian grimly. “No easy feat- apparently crashing his plane wasn’t good enough the first time.”

“Give me  _ one  _ bit of good news,” Lorelei said, more than just annoyed. “Give me  _ one good thing  _ today –  _ is the girl dead? _ ”

The Australian was silent, and then – “no confirmation yet.”

Lorelei made a wordless, animalistic noise of anger that momentarily caused all noise in the cafe to stop entirely.

“Time, darling, give it  _ time, _ ” said the Australian, and took another lipstick-stained sip of coffee. “If there’s no confirmation in a day or so, we can go after her ourselves. Until then–” She inclined her head with an infuriating little smile of condescension. “Well. Patience is a virtue, you know.”


	16. Chapter 11: Sunday (2)

Evening came fast, and it wasn’t long before the agents that Blacker had recruited were assembled on the Spectrum flight pad. It was located near the flatlands, meaning that although it was easy enough to access, any aircraft departing from it wouldn’t have any witnesses to spot them.

Blacker was inside the helicopter that they would be using, talking to Zuko, who would be flying them up the mountain. Presumably he was giving directions of some sort, because he had a map out and was pointing to it while Zuko nodded along.

Hitch walked among the agents, running last-minute checks and making sure that everybody knew what was going on. Kekoa and Sam Holt seemed to be caught up on everything, and both of them seemed fine with the plan, as it was, but that left at least eight other agents on differing levels of knowledge about what was happening.

Hitch caught a flash of bright red-pink hair, and raised a quizzical eyebrow, walking quickly over to meet Agent Lillian.

“Didn’t think I’d see you here,” he said. “Aren’t you still mad at me?”

“Oh, furious,” they agreed. “But Blacker offered, and I figured – well, might as well see this thing through to the finish. Whatever ‘this thing’ is, anyway.” They grinned, baring their teeth in an oddly vicious manner. “You still haven’t told me.”

“Agent Redfort’s missing and we’ve found the Count’s base,” Hitch said with a half-shrug. “These facts also happen to be connected.”

“And LB?” Lillian asked with a tilt of their head.

“Ask me again later,” said Hitch, and turned to talk to Kip Holbrook, one of Ruby’s fellow trainees for the agent program. He was eager to help. Apparently the animosity between him and Ruby masked a great deal of affection for her, which sounded about right- a lot of Ruby’s friendships appeared to be based on large amounts of affectionate insults and ribbing.

Three agents who Hitch didn’t know personally were also there – but Blacker had assured him that they were loyal enough and had insisted on coming after hearing the full story.

As well as all of those people, SJ had shown up, although she admitted freely that there wasn’t much of a chance she’d contribute anything of use to the rescue mission, being only a lab tech.

“I did bring liquid nitrogen, though,” she said cheerfully, hefting a heat-proof canister. “I think Blacker was joking, but I figured – hey, just in case.”

Finally, Doctor Harper was there as well- toting a large bag full of various medical paraphernalia that she also claimed was ‘just in case’ – and with Ruby’s post-mission track record in mind, Hitch agreed that this was an entirely fair precaution to make.

It took a while to get everybody organized and crammed into the helicopter. They were a few kilograms over the standard weight limit, according to Zuko. Although SJ offered to stay behind, they eventually worked out a way to get everybody up the mountain that involved ditching the spare fuel tank and hoping desperately that they actually wouldn’t need it.

And that was how twelve Spectrum agents that weren’t so much ‘rogue’ as ‘slightly bending the rules so their boss wouldn’t notice’ ended up setting up an impromptu field camp on the plateau outside the hidden entrance on Great Bear Mountain.

It was dark when they arrived and although it was possible to see, the addition of lighting made the task a lot easier. Kekoa took the position of command, directing everybody into place. Although it was clear that she was more than slightly out of her element on land, everybody seemed to listen to her.

“There might be cameras; surveillance,” she said. “We need to work quickly.”

While the field agents set up a barricade of sorts facing towards the entrance in case they needed to defend, Hitch, Blacker and the other non-field agents moved to the entrance itself to work on actually getting in.

“It’s definitely looser than this morning,” Blacker said, hands moving across the disc. SJ was holding a torch up so they could all see, and Hitch was looking over both their shoulders. “We might need to set up a ramp, it’d make it a lot easier to get up and down in a hurry.”

“I can try to get something rigged,” Zuko said. “I’ve got some materials in the helicopter.”

“Get onto that,” Hitch said, and Zuko moved off. “Can we bottleneck the area- make it so if anybody  _ does  _ come out, we can pick them off as soon as they reach the entrance?”

“Plausible,” Lillian said. “The cave’s definitely tight enough- we’d need to advance the barricade.”

“Do we have enough time?”

“Difficult to say,” Lillian said, running a hand through their high ponytail. “When were you planning on going in?”

“As soon as possible,” Hitch said, and glanced at his watch. “Let’s say, ETE minus ten. Think you can sort that?”

“On it already,” Lillian said, ducking out of the cave and heading back towards the main camp.

“I’m late,” said Kip, ducking in almost as soon as Lillian exited, “sorry. Was working with the rest of the base camp. They said to tell you that we’re using standard code for identification.”

_ Standard code _ was the long string of numbers that all Spectrum agents memorized in case they needed to check that the coast was clear.

“Got it,” Hitch said.

“Wait,” Blacker said. “We can’t use that. Apart from the fact that we have literally no idea if LB really betrayed us or not, there’s a mole on the loose – standard code’s not secure anymore. We need to come up with something else.”

“Call and response,” SJ suggested. “Call is the first letter of somebody’s name, response is the last letter of it. In your case,” she swept the torch in Blacker’s direction, “that would be call, B, response, R.”

Hitch thought this over very briefly. “That works. Only use names on our agent IDs, though, we don’t want this to get confusing.”

“Perish the thought,” Blacker muttered. “Okay, that’s all well and good, but how do we differentiate a good situation from a bad?”

“Stoplight colors,” Dr Harper chipped in. “If the situation’s okay, state an item that’s green, if not, state an item that’s red.”

“A bit convoluted, but that’s fine,” Hitch agreed. “Your skills are wasted as a doctor, by the way. You should have switched to crisis management.”

“I’m fine as I am,” said Dr Harper, and nodded at Kip. “I don’t think I’ll be much use here. I’ll help you get the word out about the new code.”

Kip gave everybody a double-thumbs up, and then pointed at Hitch. “Tell us when you’re going in. We’ll be ready.”

“Anything else we need to do here?” Hitch asked Blacker and SJ as the other two moved off- the three of them being the only ones left.

“Pray that everything doesn’t go pear-shaped?” SJ suggested, and shrugged. “I don’t know, I think we’re pretty much done in here for now.”

“We just need Zuko to get the ramp rigged,” Blacker added, moving away from the metal disc that served as the entrance.

Hitch checked his watch again. “We’re at T-minus 6 minutes now. Let’s get outside and finish prepping.”

Blacker and SJ nodded, and the three of them left the overhang and climbed up the side of the slope. A few guns trained on them as they exited, but were quickly lowered when it was realized who they were. Hitch joined the rest of the Spectrum agents at the barricade, which had indeed been advanced forward several metres at the direction of Agent Lillian.

“Report,” Hitch requested, approaching Kekoa, who was standing in front of everyone else, monitoring the setup.

“Things are stable,” she said. “We’re just about ready.” She looked at him. “We need a frequency.”

“You’re right,” Hitch said, and raised his voice so everybody could hear. “Everybody, regroup here, now!”

Within minutes, all of the eleven other agents were clustered around the barricade, awaiting instructions.

“Okay, for starters – thank you all for coming tonight,” Hitch said, addressing the group. “I know it’s not required of you as part of your job, and there’s a big possibility we might all get in hot water for doing this, so I’d like you to all know that I really appreciate. Secondly, we’re trying to keep this operation low-key, for obvious reasons, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be careful doing this. Standard procedures apply, people. Saying that…” He gestured to the watch on his wrist. “We’re setting the communication frequency to 269 GHz, everybody get that done now.”

There was a brief rustling of fabric and a slight murmur as everybody set their communicators to that.

“Good,” Hitch said. “Maintain strict radio silence unless something big happens. I mean  _ really _ big. We don’t know who might be tracking us.”

**RULE 9** :  **_There is always a chance that someone, somewhere is watching you._ **

Or listening, as the case may be.

“We’re going to get started in three minutes,” he said. “I’m going in first, and I’m going in alone. Nobody comes after me,  _ unless _ I don’t radio back in the agreed amount of time, or somebody other than me comes out first. Understood?”

There was a muted mumble of agreement.

“Right,” said Hitch. “Anybody who’s not a field agent- I’m defining that as anyone who has a weapon and/or two years minimum combat experience so you’re included in that, Holbrook – get back to the helicopter. Everybody else, set up along the barricade. Lillian, you’re with me. Four minutes, people – get going.”

The camp became a whirl of activity within seconds – all field agents moving swiftly to prepare for the upcoming task, while Dr Harper, SJ and Zuko headed back to the helicopter, which was parked on the opposite side of the plateau on top of the mountain. Blacker hung back momentarily.

“You sure of this?” he said quietly to Hitch. “It’s not too late to call in proper backup – even if LB  _ is  _ a traitor or a mole, she’d be obligated to do it anyway.”

“I’m sure,” Hitch said. “We’re on the clock now, though, so –”

“Got it,” said Blacker, and turned to head back to the helicopter. He paused, and turned around again. “Good luck.”

“Hopefully I won’t need it,” Hitch said. Lillian tapped his elbow- they were considerably shorter than him, making it the only way other than shouting to get his attention.

“Two minutes,” they mouthed at him, holding up two fingers to get the message across.

He gave them a nod, and held one finger up –  _ be there in one –  _ before quickly walking around, checking everything was set up. If there ever was a time to be immensely over-prepared, it was now.

He caught up with Lillian at the bottleneck gap between the barricade and the overhang, and they exchanged nods. Hitch raised a hand to signal that everything was ready.

“Radio check,” called Sam from the back of the setup, and all agents ran quick scans to make sure all systems were online. After confirming that everything was working, Sam nodded. “We’re entering radio silence now, as planned. You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Hitch said, and led Lillian into the overhang.

From the entrance, it was impossible to see the barricade that had been set up – it was very well-camouflaged with the surroundings, and you’d probably only notice it properly upon getting closer. It was silent outside, as well. You’d never have guessed that anybody was waiting outside.

Inside the overhang, a ramp had indeed been set up. Slats of wood were arranged in a sort of slope along the ground and wall, to make it easier to access the entrance when it was eventually opened. More easy to navigate than a stepladder, but not a permanent thing.

“Cover me until I get in,” Hitch said to Lillian in a low voice, who nodded and pulled out their gun. “I’ll be busy with the metal hatch and I might not be able to defend myself if something happens. If everything works out and nothing  _ does  _ happen, get back to the barricade and wait with everyone else.”

“Got it,” said Lillian, and shifted to a better point of vantage as Hitch positioned his hands on the grip of the entrance cover. “Ready when you are.”

Hitch held up five fingers.  _ Five, _ he mouthed, and then lowered the hand back to the entrance, counting down silently.  _ Four. Three. Two.  _ On  _ one _ he twisted the plate sharply clockwise by the handle, and it spun smoothly in his hands. It took three twists to take it out fully, and when the entire weight of it came off from its thread, it weighed surprisingly less than expected.

He quickly leaned down and propped it against the wall. Lillian came forward to cover him, but nobody was coming out of the entrance just yet.

They both looked up into the entrance. It contained a cylindrical tube that went upwards for maybe ten metres before it cut off. There were rungs set into the walls to aid ascent, almost like you’d find on a ship of some sort. It appeared to be well-lit.

Without a word, Hitch stepped up onto the top of the ramp, using it as height to reach the first rung. He pulled himself up into the hole in the rock, and began to climb.


	17. Chapter 12: Sunday (3)

The interior of the Count’s hideout in the mountains appeared to be made up of a long, dark corridor, lit by honest-to-god flickering torches that were mounted in the walls with metal brackets. The lines of torches on both walls retreated off into the distance, and Hitch had to take a brief moment to wonder how expensive the entire place had to be to build and maintain. It probably presented a huge fire hazard.

He shook that thought off quickly, and retrieved his gun from his belt, clicking the safety off. He made his way down the torch-lit corridor as quietly and quickly as possible.

It wasn’t long until he came across a doorway, set into the left side of the hallway. The door was closed, but not locked, and it opened with barely a squeak. Apparently the Count kept his base well-maintained. For an evil villain, the guy certainly had flair.

The room was empty of people, and filled with maps of all kinds – papering the walls, sitting in piles on desks, scattered over the floor in a seemingly careless manner. There was a large globe hanging from the ceiling that appeared to be turning slowly, powered by an invisible motor.

It was sort of interesting, but definitely not what he was looking for. He left the room, closing the door behind him, and moved on.

There was a door roughly every couple of meters, on alternating sides of the hallway. They were all unmarked, but none of them were actually locked. Their contents ranged widely, going from the type of thing you’d typically expect to see in somebody’s house – rooms containing kitchens and cupboards, and one lined from wall-to-wall with towering wood bookshelves – to the decidedly more odd. One room was completely white and contained nothing but a gramophone sitting on the ground, playing one bar of music (Mozart, probably) over and over again. The acoustics were exquisite, and the gramophone looked antique, but all in all it was a very unsettling room.

Three fairly mundane rooms down from the gramophone room, Hitch encountered his first locked door, or what he thought was a locked door at first. In reality, it was just jammed, and took some slight force to open.

Inside was what could only be described as a torture chamber. Quite apart from the fact that it was dimly lit, and various devices of dubious purposes filled the place from wall-to-wall, the general atmosphere of it seemed to scream  _ dungeon. _ Chains hung from the walls, and there was the distant sound of water dripping and rats squeaking irregularly – although that was probably just a theatrical touch on the Count’s behalf, since there were no actual rats or leaks in the roof to be seen.

Hitch was very relieved to find that there was nobody in this room either. If he was honest with himself, he’d never have thought that even the  _ Count, _ as theatrical and clichéd as he was, would have something like a  _ torture chamber –  _ it would almost be laughable, if it weren’t so horrifying.

He left that room behind, and moved forward at a quicker pace. The corridor was starting to curve around on itself, and he noticed that the floor was sloping downwards. At his best guess, that probably meant that the hideout was contained within the mountain itself, taking up space in a kind of corkscrew spiral. He had no idea just how large the place was, or how long it would take to find Ruby (or  _ anybody, _ really), and he needed to radio back in fifteen minutes or less – the agreed amount of time – or the rest of the agents would come in after him.

Two more rooms contained nothing but various forms of weaponry, all very neatly kept and maintained. Half of it would definitely be considered very,  _ very _ illegal by any country’s standards. Even with all of Hitch’s training and experience in mind, he was beginning to get mildly nervous and more than slightly disturbed by the continued silence and emptiness.

The room after that – a garage of sorts, containing at least twenty different types of cars, several trucks, a few motorcycles, and a miniplane. There was a large shutter at the opposite end that probably opened out onto the mountain itself, and was probably also camouflaged. Hitch made a swift mental note of this, and then slammed the door, moving on.

The next room was completely empty.

At this point, Hitch wasn’t expecting much – more empty rooms at best, at worst, another torture chamber. Which was why he was almost surprised when he entered through the next unmarked, unlocked door, and saw a figure, curled over on herself in the corner of what was predominately another empty, undecorated room.

Her hair was falling over her face, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her knees, like she was trying to hide from some swiftly-approaching danger. She looked defeated, tired, child-like, but there was no doubt about it. The girl sitting in the corner of the empty room was –

“Ruby,” said Hitch, shocked, speaking aloud almost without thinking about it. He lowered his gun instantly – he had had it out and at the ready upon opening every door, even though it hadn’t been necessary at all yet. “Ruby, are you–”

Ruby Redfort uncurled herself from the ball she had tucked herself into with a sort of uncanny fluidity – bringing her knees down to the ground, hands to her side. She seemed to be getting into some sort of ready position, preparing for a fight. She certainly seemed prepared enough for a fight, until her darting, wary eyes fell upon Hitch.

“Oh,” she said, relaxing minutely – although he could see she still remained utterly tense. “It’s you. Took you long enough.”

**Bite Me,** said the words across her faded green shirt. It rather looked like something had. Blood- mostly dried- was splattered liberally across the front of her chest and neck, and although it looked like she had scrubbed most of it off onto her jeans, there were still large amounts of it on her hands and under her fingernails.

“You know me,” Hitch said as casually as he could manage, moving forward into the room. “I’m more of a nick-of-time kind of guy.”

**RUBY:** You call  _ this  _ the nick of time? – man, you must have a worse sense of time than I thought.

**HITCH:** What do you want to call it then, looks like I got here before you managed to get yourself killed. Although, to be honest, it’s not looking good.

**RUBY:** What do you mean?

“Kid,” said Hitch, letting some of the concern from the last couple of days leak into his voice. He gestured at her shirt. “You’re covered in blood.”

There was a long silence as Ruby peered down at herself.

“Oh,” she said, face curiously blank. “Okay, so what if I am? None of it’s mine. I think.”

“That’s really not reassuring,” Hitch said, taking a step towards her and freezing when she flinched noticeably at his approach. “Are you absolutely  _ sure  _ you’re not bleeding to death?” he asked, not moving back but not moving any further towards her, either.

“Pretty sure,” Ruby said, almost cheerfully. She ran her hands along the bare skin under her shirt, and held them out. There was no new blood, which was gratifying. “See- nothing to worry about. Stop fussing, bozo. Bigger things to think about.”

**HITCH:** Bigger things?

**RUBY:** Oh, come on – you got here, didn’t you? You must’ve found something out along the way.

**HITCH:** I found out many things on the way, which is actually sort of impressive, especially considering all the hoops you had me jump through.

**RUBY:** Hah – you call those ‘hoops’? Imagine what it was like for me, I had to figure all that out from  _ scratch. _

Hitch nodded, conceding the point. “Yeah. That  _ was  _ clever. Good job on that, by the way.”

Ruby returned the nod, and winced slightly. Her head rolled to the side.

**RUBY:** LB’s probably gonna fire me.

**HITCH:** Mm, probably. But she’s probably going to fire me and Blacker too, so- maybe we can start a club.

Ruby blinked at him for a moment in complete incomprehension.

**HITCH:** We might have had to go behind her back a bit in order to actually track down a lot of the stuff you mentioned in those notebooks.

**RUBY:** Oh yeah – that makes sense, I guess. Sorry about that.

**HITCH:** Really?

**RUBY:** Well, I’m sorry enough to foot the bill for membership badges for our exclusive ‘fired-by-LB’ club. Is that enough?

Despite her flippant remarks, Ruby was looking considerably more the worse for wear. She appeared to be having difficulty breathing. Hitch took another experimental step further, and was relieved when Ruby didn’t flinch this time.

**HITCH:** Look, I hate to break up this nice little chat of ours, but I really gotta know something, and it’s important. Mind if I ask you something?

**RUBY:** Sure, go right ahead.

**HITCH:** You know this base – this hideout, this headquarter place, whatever you wanna call it.

**RUBY:** Sure I know it – I’m standing, well, sitting, right in it, aren’t I?

**HITCH:** Is there anybody else here apart from you and me?

A long,  _ long  _ moment passed, in which Ruby’s gaze drifted from somewhere just above Hitch’s head to the ground.

“Nah,” she said after contemplating the floor for about a minute. All traces of facetiousness had dissolved rapidly from her voice, like sugar in hot water. She sounded nothing like her usual self, her voice had almost dropped to a completely different register. “Nobody – no-one’s here. Just you. Me. The Count.”

Hitch nearly dropped his gun, which he was still holding loosely in his right hand, but he managed to control his voice. “The Count?”

“The Count Von Viscount,” Ruby clarified, as if it even needed explaining. Her voice almost seemed to rise back to normal levels of energy again. “The guy who’s been trying to kill me? You might know him better as –”  and then it dropped right back down to defeated again almost instantly, with no warning. “– well, nevermind.”

“Kid, be straight with me here,” Hitch said, taking a step forward. Ruby didn’t even seem to notice him approach, which was worrying. “Are you telling me that the Count is  _ here, _ right  _ here,  _ in the mountain with us right now?”

“Sure,” said Ruby, eyes unfocused. She jerked a hand messily to the right, apparently indicating the wall next to her, or maybe beyond it. “Just next door. I think.”

Hitch weighed this up. Ruby was clearly in no condition to make it all the way back to the entrance on her own, and if the Count was still in the building, things had the potential to get very nasty, very fast. On the other hand – if it was  _ just  _ the Count, with no backup or support…

“Okay,” said Hitch. “Kid, can you just sit tight in here for a minute or so?”

The corner of Ruby’s mouth twitched minutely. “Is the numerical value of the Euler-Mascheroni constant slightly more than zero point five seven?”

Despite the situation, Hitch couldn’t help but give her a brief, annoyed look. “ _ Kid. _ ”

“That’s a yes,” Ruby said, closing her eyes. “Yes, I can sit tight. Go do–” she flapped her hand vaguely at nowhere. “–whatever.”

He shot another worried glance at her, but nodded in acquiescence, although she couldn’t see either gesture. “I’ll be right back.”

He left the room, closing the door behind him almost as an afterthought. After a second, he checked his watch. The time that had been agreed on was nearly up.

He radioed in to base camp. “L,” he said by means of greeting, choosing Lillian’s name somewhat arbitrarily as the check-in word.

“N,” said a voice that he recognized as Kekoa’s. “Situation cucumber out here. You?”

“Clownfish,” said Hitch. “It’s safe to talk though.”

“Backup?” Kekoa asked.

“Not just yet, might need it in a few minutes.” Hitch thought for a moment. “I’ve located Ruby. She’s… fine, if a bit confused.”

“Good.”

“The Count may be on the premises,” Hitch said. “If I don’t check back in ten minutes, send in whoever you think is necessary. And call LB.”

“Roger that,” she said. “Anything else?”

“That’s all. Thanks, Kekoa.”

He rung off, and set off towards the next door along without another word. It was slightly further spaced out than the other doors had been, and the door itself was considerably more grand – double doors with ornate metal handles, as opposed to just one door with a single wooden knob.

He took a deep breath, flicked off the safety on his gun, and braced his hand on the door. He gave himself a mental countdown from five.

On  _ one, _ he slammed open the door and stepped inside.

He was utterly unprepared for what he saw there.


	18. Chapter 13: Sunday (4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be warned for offscreen violence and murder in this chapter, as well as some onscreen blood! Nothing too graphic, but it’s there.

The area beyond the double oak doors resembled no less than a throne room. Draped with decadent black and white velvet on every wall, with patterned grey carpeting and everything leading up to a short set of stairs with a – yes, that was an actual  _ throne, _ right there – it was exactly the sort of place you’d expect the Count Von Viscount, in all his overdramatic glory, to hang out in.

There were bloodstains all over the floor, and –

On the throne itself – because there was really no other word for the elegantly carved ebony chair taking up the centre of the room – was another slumped figure, and this one wasn’t moving at all.

Hitch approached cautiously, gun at the ready.

The man in the chair was slouching, with his head turned upwards. He was dressed in a style that one might call old-fashioned, or perhaps Victorian – he certainly would put you in mind of a vampire, or a villain from an old B-movie. It was very much black and white. Part of his coat had fluttered upwards at some point, to cover most of his face.

His fingers were splayed almost delicately over the armrests, as if he were about to raise them at any moment, ready to conduct an imaginary orchestra. He seemed out of place and frozen in time, as if somebody had paused a recording of him and transplanted the image into real life.

It was unmistakable who he was.

“The Count,” Hitch murmured, and nudged the man none-too-gently with his foot, causing his coat to flap aside, covering more of his face and exposing his undershirt.

A dark red stain had begun to creep across his chest at some point, but had been frozen either when he had run out of blood to let or when time had simply dried it up. The Count Von Viscount was most definitely dead, and had been for a while.

Hitch stepped back, and took a few seconds to simply process the fact that the man who had plagued the lives of Spectrum agents for so long was now gone, permanently – and in the most melodramatic way possible, too – a gunshot to the chest seemed like an apt way for the movie director-turned-villain to go.

He wondered briefly just who had done the deed. Had it been one of his employees, or a superior, or even just some rogue vigilante–?

Hitch leaned forward, and readjusted the coat that had fallen across the dead man’s face, so his features could be easily seen. As he did, he let out a low, shocked whistle. Whoever had killed the Count obviously hadn’t felt that it was enough to just shoot him in the chest – they had done the same to his head, too. It barely even resembled a human face anymore. The Count’s long nose and chiselled cheekbones had been reduced to so much bloody, torn meat. Bits of his skull were visible through the pulp. Not a pretty way to go, even for the most evil of men.

He froze for a long moment as he spotted something else – fingerprints, on the side of the Count’s face that had been untouched by the destruction. They were small fingerprints, and couldn’t have belonged to anybody but a child, or maybe a teenager.

_ No, _ he thought,  _ she couldn’t have– _

And then he went over the facts in his head.

**One –** apart from Ruby and the now-deceased Count, Hitch hadn’t seen anybody at all in the area inside the mountain. The entire place seemed utterly deserted.

**Two –** there was apparently only one way out and in, and that way had been locked off for the past couple of hours.

**Three –** when he had last seen Ruby, all of two minutes ago, she had been covered in blood- and she had said it wasn’t hers.

_ Oh, _ he thought instead, eyeing the gruesome corpse in front of him.  _ Oh no. _

He searched the room quickly, and found that there was an old-fashioned but still entirely functional revolver that had been discarded hastily in the corner, like the user had thrown it there. A quick check of it revealed that it still contained two bullets, the previous four having already been fired.

Three bullets had been already accounted for – two in the Count’s head, the other one through his heart – but that still left one that could be anywhere. He looked around the room one more time, and spotted it; a messy circular hole, driven into the wall just next to the doors. It looked like it had been fired pretty haphazardly, maybe during a struggle of some sort.

From there, it was pretty easy to work out what the scene must have been like. At some point during their confrontation, Ruby must have gained control of the Count’s revolver. This might have resulted in the gun going off and firing into the wall, or maybe it was a warning shot before then. Either way, Ruby ended up killing the Count – either accidentally or in self-defence, Hitch really didn’t want to consider any other way that it might have happened. The wounds to the head were definitely the work of an amateur, and the shot to the heart was probably just a lucky, if somewhat ironic, coincidence.

“Jesus,” Hitch muttered with a sharp exhale through his teeth. In his time as an agent, he had seen a number of things that would be considered highly disturbing and gruesome by anybody’s standards, but this came very close to reaching the top. No wonder Ruby was so shaken. He reached for his wrist, and radioed back to base.

“K,” he said, thinking,  _ Kekoa. _

“A,” came the response – this time, it was Lillian. “Situation kiwi out here, what’s up with you?”

“Also kiwi,” Hitch said, “that is to say, all clear. I found the Count.”

There was a brief, choked noise on the other end. “And you’re still  _ alive? _ ” Lillian managed after a second.

“To be fair, he wasn’t alive  _ himself _ to start with.”

“The Count’s  _ dead? _ ” Lillian said, but it was slightly more indistinct and further away this time. Their voice was quickly replaced by Kekoa’s own – calmer and much more lower-pitched.

“Please confirm, Hitch,” she said. “The Count’s dead – there’s no way he could be still alive?”

“Yeah,” Hitch said, with a sigh. “Bullet through the head and everything. I’m standing next to his body right now, it’s definitely him.”

“Copy that,” Kekoa said. “And Redfort?”

“I gotta go check on her,” said Hitch. “I left her alone for a bit – I didn’t realize. I think she might have been the one that killed him.” He rubbed his eyes for a moment, suddenly very tired. “Send in backup now, and call Spectrum. We need cleanup detail, as soon as possible. This is a real mess, let me tell you.”

“Copy,” Kekoa agreed, and had a hushed, rapid-fire conversation with one of the other field agents for a minute. “What about LB?”

“Doesn’t matter at this point, she’ll find out anyway. My main concern at the moment is getting Ruby out of here, and getting everything secured before the Count’s associates come calling.”

“Sending in backup now,” said Kekoa. “See you soon.”

Hitch left the throne room, heading back to the room where he had stumbled upon Ruby initially. He opened the door and stepped inside. Ruby was still in the same corner as before, although her grip around her knees was somewhat looser than before. She looked up at him as he entered, and he noticed that she looked a lot more pale than usual. The freckles on her usually tan skin were standing out, making her look sickly. The traces of blood that were almost everywhere didn’t help much, either.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi,” he replied, and they stayed there, regarding each other in silence for a long moment. It was such a ridiculously normal situation that it bordered on the surreal.

“You’ve got your serious face on,” Ruby mumbled after a second. Her voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, and she swallowed, hard. “What’s happened?”

“My serious face?” Hitch was amused, despite himself. “What makes that different from my regular face?”

“Not much.” Ruby frowned at him. “Mainly the eyes, I think. Don’t dodge the question.”

Hitch ignored that for the moment, and came to kneel in front of her. “Do you think you can stand up?”

“Well, I can  _ try _ .” Ruby rose to one foot, and after establishing that she could indeed use that one to its full efficiency, put weight on the other one. That proved to be a mistake – she immediately fell back onto the ground. “Ow,” she said rather mildly.

“Twisted ankle,” Hitch guessed. “Okay, we can work with that- how are your hands, by the way?”

“Hands?” Ruby flexed them experimentally. “Ow! – the hands are fine, my wrist, not so much. How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess.” Hitch surveyed Ruby’s right hand. It was swelling slightly, probably sprained – a common problem for people who didn’t fire guns properly. “Anything else I should know about?”

“Probably a concussion of some sort,” Ruby said, rubbing the side of her head and wincing. She eyed him suspiciously. “What happened? You’re not insulting me or anything, something’s wrong.”

“Hey, the way I remember it, you usually start insulting me first _ , _ ” Hitch said lightly, and extended a hand out to her. “To be honest, the lack of insults is kinda unsettling, if you know what I mean.”

“If you want high quality insults, you might need to wait a while,” Ruby said, attempting to grab onto him with her non-injured hand. “I’m sort of finding it hard to focus.” After a few tries, she managed to accept his outstretched hand, and got shakily to her feet. “Ha. Did it,” she said, sounding moderately pleased with herself. She hopped on her one good leg experimentally, and nodded, apparently satisfied. “Can we get out of here yet?”

Hitch looked at her again. She was still quite pale, but she was apparently aware enough to be cracking jokes with her own particular brand of humour. “Kid, I can honestly say that nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

“Great,” she said, and there was a long pause as absolutely nothing proceeded to happen. She shifted awkwardly, clearly eager to leave. “Did you mean, like,  _ now, _ or –”

“Yeah,” Hitch said. “I just need to know something first. It’s kind of urgent, so…”

Ruby blinked, and then inclined her head in a sort of  _ well, go on then  _ gesture.

“The Count,” he said, watching her carefully. “When I got into the room you pointed out, somebody had shot him in the head and heart, then threw the gun down and left him there. I’m sorry, but I really need to ask –” He broke off, suddenly unsure of the conclusion he had come to.

Outside the room, he could hear the sounds of the Spectrum team beginning to enter the premises. They were at the other end of the corridor now, but it probably wouldn’t take them long to get to where the Count was.

“You want to know if I shot the Count,” Ruby said – and it wasn’t exactly a question, either. “If I – if I killed him.”

Hitch nodded. “Yeah.”

Ruby sighed, and her head dropped down momentarily. “Yeah. That was me.”

“You really don’t know how to shoot a gun, kid,” Hitch said, after blanking momentarily on what to say.

“You think I don’t know that?” Ruby snorted, indicating her non-functioning hand. She had shifted back to her normal personality, after that very momentary lapse. “Look, can we seriously go now? I hate this place. I seriously hate it.”

Hitch gave her a halfway, slightly crooked smile. “‘Course we can.”

After a few failed attempts to co-ordinate with each other, they managed to get it together enough so they could move at a relatively smooth pace, and headed for the door. Just before opening it, Hitch stopped, causing Ruby to stumble to a halt.

“Jeez, give a girl some warning next time,” she muttered. “What gives?”

“Just thought I should warn you – I called in a bunch of favours, there’s a lot of Spectrum agents outside, and a bunch more should be coming soon.”

“LB?” Ruby asked, eyes widening in slight panic.

“I kept her out of it, don’t worry.”

Ruby initially side-eyed him with some amount of distrust, but nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

“You okay?” he said after a moment.

“I guess,” said Ruby, sounding unsure. “Or, I mean, I will be.”

Hitch leaned over and hugged her, quite suddenly. Ruby stiffened at the contact, but didn’t move away. For a moment her hands hovered awkwardly, and then she seemed to just accept that this was happening.   
  


“We’re doing hugs now?” she wondered aloud.

“Apparently.” He drew back from the embrace after a second or so, and opened the door. “Let’s go.”

“Thought you’d never get around to it,” Ruby said, and they entered the hallway, moving towards the exit. There was a steady stream of agents moving methodically through the rooms – most of whom Hitch recognized from the group he had brought in via helicopter, but there were others too.

Ruby, uncharacteristically, kept her head down most of the way through the journey, although she did exchange some quick, sarcastic words of greeting with Kip Holbrook, who was passing by after clearing the map room. Hitch would have called her out on wasting time, but the familiar ritual seemed to make her happy, so he let it be.

“R,” called Hitch once they were right next to the hatch.

“Y,” came the responding call from Lillian, who was apparently stationed below. “Everything’s green down here, Hitch. You got the kid?”

“I’m right here,” Ruby said, raising her voice. “Don’t know how I’m going to get down that ladder, though.”

Hitch regarded the stretch of ladder that spanned the distance from where they were to the outside of the mountain, and agreed – climbing down would be difficult with a twisted ankle.

“We could rig up a harness,” he suggested, “but that might take a while.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Lillian, voice echoing up the shaft. “Give me a second- I need to clear the ramp away for a moment.”

There was a few seconds of muffled scuffling, and then they could clearly see Lillian’s bright pink-red hair as they stood directly below the tunnel.

“What’s the plan?” Ruby asked.

Lillian inclined their head. “Come on and jump down, I’ll catch you.”

Ruby immediately limped back from the edge, shaking her head in complete disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Hey, unless you want to wait for the harness,” Hitch said, only half-joking.

Ruby scowled. “You can’t seriously think I’ll–”

“Lillian’s pretty strong, kid,” he said. “They can catch you, easy.”

“Yeah, I could probably arm-wrestle LB and manage not to lose for about half a minute,” the agent said, “which is kinda impressive when you consider that she fought a crocodile when she was like eight. Plus I’ve been working out.” They wiggled their fingers in anticipation, holding their arms out. “What’cha waiting for?”

Ruby grimaced, and glanced at Hitch. “If this goes wrong, I’m blaming you.”

“Noted.” He pointed at the ground through the hole in the ground. “If you’re on-board with this, though, get down there – we don’t have all day.”

Ruby slid to the ground and swung her legs over the edge of the tunnel. She glanced downwards, sighed, and pushed forwards. With a yelp and a muffled curse, she fell downwards. It happened almost too fast to process. Almost instantly, Lillian let out a small noise of satisfaction, and Ruby could be heard laughing.

Hitch descended the rungs, and jumped down to the ground to join them – Lillian was just putting down, and Ruby was still laughing.

“That was kind of awesome,” she admitted, using the granite wall of the overhang to guide herself to a standing position. “But next time I want to do it without a twisted ankle.”

Lillian grinned. “I’m here all week,” they said, and exchanged a fist-bump with Ruby. “I’ve gotta go work on cleanup in that evil villain lair up there, so I’ll talk to y’all later.”

* * *

 

Ruby and Hitch arrived at base camp a few minutes later, and were immediately swamped by ten agents, most of which needed confirmation for some minor task or another. The exception to this was Dr Harper, who was there for Ruby’s benefit.

“What’s the problem this time,” she asked with a sigh as they found a rock for Ruby to sit on.

“Twisted ankle, sprained wrist, probably got a concussion,” Hitch rattled off. “But you might want to have a look for yourself.”

“I am  _ right here, _ ” Ruby grumbled.

Dr Harper looked amused. “Yeah, I noticed. Good to have you back, by the way.”

She gave Ruby a quick check-up, and ended up directing her to elevate her ankle and put ice on it, and probably not fall asleep until they were absolutely sure she wasn’t harbouring a secret neurological injury. Just as she was ascertaining that Ruby’s sprained wrist was just that – sprained – Agent Blacker hurried over, looking flat-out delighted to see her. His jacket was only half on, and it looked like he had thrown it on in a hurry.

Ruby looked pretty thrilled as well. “Hey!” she said as he approached.

“Hey yourself!” he said, searching in the pockets of his coat. “Give me a sec – I got you something.”

“All right,” she said, grinning, “but if it’s not a donut, we’re not friends anymore.”

He made a wounded sort of noise, locating a brown paper bag and presenting it to her. “What sort of person do you think I am, Ruby?”

Ruby opened the bag, and smiled. Inside was a slightly squished jelly donut with colourful sprinkles. “You’re the best, you know that?” she said, looking up at him. This just so happened to be the first point where Blacker actually got a proper look at her- pale, covered in blood, hair messy.

“You look  _ awful _ ,” said Blacker, horrified into brutal honesty.

“You should see the other guy,” Ruby said.

It was at this point that Hitch moved away to a relatively quieter area of the camp to answer the call that was currently coming through to his watch. Even before answering or even checking the ID of the caller, he had a feeling he knew who it was.

“Betrayed by my own staff, I see,” said LB without preamble. Her voice was deceptively calm and she sounded as collected as she always did. “And you didn’t even turn out to be the mole.”

Hitch released a silent sigh.  _ Well, now she knows. _ “It wasn’t because of anything personal, if it helps.”

“Strangely enough, it doesn’t.” LB was silent for a few seconds. “I need to ask. Why?”

“We – I found Room 0.”  _ Let’s not get Blacker or anyone else involved in this. _ “I also found out you were withholding information on the Count.”

“And so you decided to take matters into your own hands,” LB concluded. “Well, that’s fair, I might have done the same in your position.” There was a slight pause. “I did wonder why some of them were missing.”

“That wasn’t me, actually. Somebody had gotten to them before I did.”

“Redfort,” LB guessed, tone flat. “She does tend to have a – propensity for that sort of thing.”

“Somebody else,” Hitch said. “Possibly the mole.”

“Huh,” she said, sounding genuinely surprised for a second. "So – you don’t know?”

“Know what?” Hitch said, suspicious.

**LB:** Forget that for the moment. What’s the situation? – assuming you’re actually going to tell the truth this time.

**HITCH:** You don’t know already?

**LB:** I’m currently tied up in a mountain of red tape, and that’s barely a metaphor. Just summarize the main points for me.

**HITCH:** Fine. Ruby found the location of the Count’s headquarters from your files, and for some reason nobody can quite figure out, went after him herself.

**LB:** I see – not ‘so sick she can barely sit up’, I take it.

**HITCH:** We managed to track her down over the course of two or so days, and I went in to get her a short while ago. That was successful, by the way, the kid’s pretty much okay. Physically, anyway – only some superficial damage.

**LB:** Good to hear.

**HITCH:** It’s the Count that took the worst of it.

There was a long silence before LB actually spoke again. “And by ‘the Count’, you do mean-”

“The Count Von Viscount, yes – I found him D.O.A.”

“You’re absolutely sure it’s him,” LB said, rather urgently, “the body, the face – has he been identified.”

“The body, sort of,” Hitch said, confused but unwilling to show it. “He’s pretty unmistakable, and it was confirmed indirectly by the kid that it was him. The face, though – that might be a bit harder to pinpoint.”

“What.” No inflection whatsoever. “Why – explain.”

“His head had practically been caved in. He had sustained multiple gunshot wounds to it. It’s horrifically messy, we’re going to need to get the lab to ID him properly.”

More silence, and then: “You really don’t know, do you?”

“I have no idea what you’re referring to,” Hitch admitted.

A second or so passed. LB sighed. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. We’ve been friends since we were kids, and working together since barely less than that, and I sincerely wish that what happens next won’t damage that. I know that’s completely futile, though, so – once again. I apologize.”

And before Hitch could get a word in edgeways, she hung up. When he attempted to call her back, the call just didn’t connect. After three tries, he gave up altogether, and headed back to the rest of the group.

Blacker and Ruby were having a lighthearted conversation about fractals when he joined them, interspersed with the occasional comment from Dr Harper, who looked like she was no longer needed for medical purposes but was sticking around anyway. It was almost as though nothing had happened within the base – just another laid-back day at the office. Or out of it, anyway.

“LB called,” he said, taking a seat on a nearby rock. To her credit, Ruby barely flinched at this new news.

“Oh?” she said, sounding morbidly interested. “Am I fired yet?”

“No, but I get the impression that  _ she  _ might be, soon,” Hitch said. “Although that’s only an educated guess.”

Blacker made an  _ explain please _ motion with his hands and Dr Harper made a similarly interested noise.

“LB’s not actually the highest power in Spectrum – only the leader of Spectrum 8,” said Hitch, more for Ruby’s benefit than anybody else’s. “To be fair to her, she does make the top ten list, but there’s at least five people that can overrule her at any given time. When Internal Affairs, or Spectrum One, or whoever it is that’s going to inevitably look into the nightmare of paperwork that will emerge from this situation, they’re going to find that she’s been keeping some crucial things from the rest of Spectrum.”

“Like the location of the Count’s base, his identity,” Dr Harper said, nodding. “I can see how that wouldn’t go down too well.”

“Wait, they can fire  _ LB? _ ” Ruby said incredulously, apparently a few seconds behind. “She can  _ be fired? _ That can  _ happen? _ ”

“Anybody and everyone, up to and beyond the president of the United States, can be fired,” said Blacker, glancing over at Ruby. “LB’s pretty powerful, but she isn’t God. Not even close.”

“Who knows what they might find once they start digging through her history,” Dr Harper said with a rather stricken look. “If she was hiding the Count’s location for god knows how long…”

“I would normally say that you wouldn’t find anything in her files,” said Blacker. “But up until today, I would have said that LB would  _ never  _ do anything vaguely shady. And now –” His gaze shifted slowly over to Hitch, and he shrugged. “Well, Hitch has known her longer. She’s only my boss, I don’t exactly know her that well.”

“Up until a few days ago, I would have agreed with what you said – I never thought LB could have gone corrupt.” Hitch shook his head. “I thought I knew her better than that.”

They sat in silence for a while, watching the movement of the camp around them. In the distance, the speck of another Spectrum helicopter approaching the mountain could be seen. The operation was becoming very busy, very quick – this was the sort of thing that would be hard to keep out of the newspapers after the fact.

“You really don’t know, do you?” Ruby said wonderingly, breaking the silence. All three adults turned to look at her with near-identical quizzical expressions. She shifted uncomfortably on the rock under their gazes.

“LB said something similar,” Hitch said, quirking an eyebrow. “Do you have something you want to share?”

“You figured out everything else,” she muttered, almost to herself. “So why didn’t–? I guess I never wrote it down… and if his head was –”

“Well, that’s my interest piqued,” said Blacker.

“Yeah, I kinda want to hear this too,” agreed Dr Harper.

Ruby took a deep breath, apparently steadying herself. “Okay.” She took another breath, and then looked up, ready to address them. “One question before I do – and it’s a bit of a weird one, so bear with me.”

“Go right ahead,” Hitch said.

Her face was dead serious, shadows reflecting across it as the helicopter’s landing lights flashed across the camp. “Was Bradley Baker’s body ever recovered?”

This was such a drastic tangent from the topic at hand that nobody responded to her for a good few seconds.

“No,” said Blacker, “his body was never found. His plane was found, or parts of it at least- the explosion mangled it badly enough that any body would have been incinerated on impact.”

“Are you absolutely sure of that?”

“I was part of the cleanup team,” Hitch said. “Nobody could have survived a crash like that, not even an incredible agent like Baker – but what does that have to do with anything?”

“New question,” Ruby said, not answering that. “Have you ever seen the Count?”

Hitch frowned. “Not counting fifteen minutes ago–”

“Alive,” Ruby reiterated. “Alive and undamaged. Have you ever met the Count face to face, alive and undamaged, and seen what he looks like?”

“You know I haven’t,” said Hitch. “Nobody has and lived to tell the tale, except–”

“Except me, and Bradley Baker,” Ruby agreed.  _ And Clancy Crew,  _ was the unspoken addition, not to be uttered in the presence of the other Spectrum agents. Not that it was relevant. “Another question – when did Baker encounter the Count?”

“Fairly early on, I think,” Dr Harper said, glancing at her colleagues. “I wasn’t around back then– were you?”

Blacker shook his head, but Hitch nodded. “I was. Not there personally, but I did see the aftermath. He was twenty-six at the time. Kid, I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

“It needs to be said.” Ruby’s green eyes were reflecting the light again, flashing at regular intervals as things moved in the near distance. It was eerily reminiscent of the time she had been under the influence of the Sea Whisper’s truth serum – the same odd, out-of-character intensity, but rather than being merrily talkative about the most inane of things, she was quite the opposite – focused on only the topic at hand.

Blacker seemed to have caught onto what Ruby was saying. He looked horrified and fascinated at the same time. “Oh,” he breathed, “oh no, you’re not saying-”

“I’ve never seen a proper photo of Bradley Baker, and you’ve all never seen a proper photo of the Count. In both cases, the images are too blurry, too aged.” Ruby sounded tired now, weary. “LB’s was protecting the Count’s identity, there’s no two ways about it. Why would the leader of Spectrum 8 be doing that, helping a man that’s murdered so many people? Who would LB bend all the rules to protect, risking her job and even her life?” She paused significantly. “Has anybody seen the Count and Baker at the same time?”

The world seemed to have gone utterly silent in the corner of the camp they were in.

“Bradley Baker never died in that plane crash,” Ruby said, voice oddly normal – it seemed like it should be spoken louder, maybe shouted to the entire world, or else spoken in a hushed, reverent whisper. “He faked it. It was all faked. Bradley Baker is the Count Von Viscount, and always has been.”

With this, she seemed to slump slightly, like energy had been drained from her body. Her arms snaked out again to wrap around her knees, and she closed her eyes, not saying another word.

“Oh,” was all Hitch could say. The evidence was there, and improbable as it seemed, it did make a lot of sense. His thoughts ranged from a large variety of curse words in multiple languages to  _ there is going to be a hell of a lot of paperwork after this. _

“Oh god,” Dr Harper said, sounding distant. “That’s – it’s… I can’t even begin to process this right now.”

Ruby looked up after a second. Her eyes were unfocused again, and she had gone pale once more, after regaining some of her color talking to Blacker. The blood dotted across her face stood out starkly.

“I think I want to go home now,” she said softly.

Hitch stared at her for a very long time, and then nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think that’s a good idea.”


	19. Chapter 14: Tuesday (1)

It was a day or so later, and Ruby and Clancy were huddled together on the couch underneath a frankly ridiculous amount of blankets and pillows, watching television. As soon as Clancy had heard that Ruby was alive and unharmed, he had come over and established quite firmly that he wasn’t going to leave until he was absolutely sure that she wasn’t going to go off unexpectedly and do something stupid again. For her part, Ruby didn’t seem to mind this, and mainly just seemed pleased to spend time with her friend.

Hitch was keeping half an eye on them as he chopped meat in the kitchen and listened absently to the radio. The storm front had moved across town again, and if the weather forecast was anything to go by, it would start raining heavily in the next hour. Clancy might have to sleep over if the roads became too dangerous to navigate.

On the television screen, a series of bushes exploded in quick succession, and there was a muffled sort of scream. It seemed as if they were watching some sort of comedy sketch – not usually Ruby’s sort of thing, but the two of them seemed to be enjoying it.

Hitch’s watch beeped, causing his attention to momentarily divert from the radio. He read the message with a neutral expression, and then finished making the sandwiches that he had been busy putting together.

He entered the room just as several houses, huts, and next-door neighbours exploded in convincing plumes of smoke and flames on the TV screen. Ruby and Clancy were tangled in the blankets on the couch, laughing together.

“I brought snacks,” he said, offering the plate to them – which they took, as the scene switched over to a presenter talking to an invisible audience. The three of them watched the sketch for a few minutes, Ruby and Clancy both sharing the plate of sandwiches between them.

“Got a call from Spectrum,” he said. Their heads turned to him in eerie synchronisation, and Ruby muted the television.

“What sort of call?” she asked. Behind her, the camera silently panned out to reveal that the presenter was talking to a five-foot-high filing cabinet.

“The Count’s body was identified,” he said, fully aware that he shouldn’t be telling the two of them about it. “Or, I mean – I guess we should call him Baker now, that’s who he was.”

“Is that _good_ news?” Clancy asked, shifting the blankets slightly.

“Depends how you look at it.” Hitch offered a shrug. “On one hand, it means that basically everything we’ve known about the guy for years has been a complete lie, on the other hand...”

“On the other hand, I was right,” Ruby said. She sighed, tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. “Means that I didn’t go through all that for nothing, I guess.”

“That’s the spirit,” Hitch said dryly, wondering how best to deliver the other part of information. He decided to just go straight for it. “Also, LB’s been impeached.”

Ruby didn’t react at all to this at first. Clancy just shrugged. “Inevitable,” he said.

Hitch narrowed his eyes. “How much do you know about this?”

“About as much as you’d expect.” He paused, and then clarified: “That’s everything, by the way.”

“And you’re going to keep your mouth shut?”

He mimed drawing a zip across his mouth. “Not a word,” he said, “but you knew that already.”

“Glad to hear it,” Hitch said.

Ruby pushed herself upright, apparently done with thinking about the subject. “Clancy’s right- it was inevitable.”

“There wasn’t any sort of way that she was going to come out of this without some sort of backlash,” said Hitch, wondering why Ruby was restating something that was obvious. “But we knew that already.”

Ruby shook her head. “Not that,” she said. “I mean, from the moment that Baker became the Count, or the Count became Baker, or whatever happened – LB was pretty much screwed over. There was no way that it was going to end happily for her.”

“You kind of have to feel sorry for her,” said Clancy musingly. “The love of your life turns out to be a supervillain extraordinaire- what _can_ you do?”

“Let’s hope none of us ever have to find out,” Hitch said darkly.

Clancy raised his eyebrows, and turned his head to look at Ruby. “Hey Rube – were you planning on becoming a criminal mastermind anytime soon?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” said Ruby, yawning, “I’m feeling kinda lazy right now, if you get my meaning.”

“I guess I have a day before I find out, then,” Clancy told Hitch seriously. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

“I’m only taking over the world if you help, though,” Ruby added.

“Do I get minions?” Clancy asked, eyes lighting up.

“Sure, why not – you’re in charge of our minions now.”

“Awesome.” Clancy turned back to Hitch. “Never mind, looks like you’re going to have to figure it out yourself.”

Hitch laughed, and then went serious. “There’s a – well, I guess you could say ‘court date’ planned. Except it’s not exactly a court, it’s just Spectrum One coming in to figure out what’s going on and pass a verdict. It’s two days from now.”

“Do I need to be there?” Ruby said, looking ever so slightly worried.

“No,” Hitch assured her. “I just thought you might want to know.”

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me how it goes, I guess.”

Hitch nodded and returned to the kitchen to clean up some miscellaneous plates and cutlery. Back in the living room, the television audio switched back on again, albeit at a slightly lower volume than before.

“Hey,” he heard Clancy say quietly. “I know we’re joking and all, but – are you okay with this?”

“Define ‘this’,” Ruby said at about the same tone of voice.

“This.” Hitch could easily picture Clancy making a characteristically wide, flailing gesture with his hands, maybe accidentally hitting Ruby in the process. “This thing, the – stuff – after everything that’s happened, the – this.”

There was a brief silence, and Hitch peered through the doorway just in time to see Ruby throw a pillow in Clancy’s direction, momentarily knocking him off the couch. She was laughing a bit, which probably meant that things were fine.

He withdrew, but kept listening.

“Of course I’m fine,” she said. “You know me – I always bounce back.”

“Yeah, but rubber bands have to snap _eventually._ ”

“Wow, when did _you_ get so philosophical?” she said sardonically, and then sighed. “But seriously – I’m good.”

“You’re not gonna snap?”

“Not gonna snap,” she agreed. “Unless we’re talking about that thing tomorrow where we both go off the deep end together and take over the world–”

“No, not that.”

“Then no.” There was a brief, comfortable silence, then: “but I’m thinking about quitting the field agent program.”

“Wh _aat_ ?” went Clancy, startled. “But you’re all _about_ that sort of thing! Didn’t you basically blackmail LB into –”

“Yeah, I did – the key word there being ‘LB’, who’s just got herself fired. I might not even be part of Spectrum anymore, who knows.”

“Ah.” Clancy took a moment to process this. “Well, that sucks.”

“I guess.” Ruby didn’t sound very bothered by this. “I think I’d be happy with just sticking to code-breaking, anyway.”

“No action?” Clancy asked.

“Killing a man does tend to put a damper on things,” said Ruby in what was probably meant to be a deadpan, sarcastic tone. Instead, it just ended up coming out glum and sort of sad. Clancy made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like a dog that had just been kicked, and then there was a short silence, broken only by the dull white noise of the television.

Hitch dropped the dishtowel he had been using to clean off the plates in the kitchen, and went over to the doorway to check in on what was going on.

The two of them were still covered in blankets, but Clancy had leaned over to hug Ruby tightly. Ruby’s arms were wrapped around her friend, reciprocating the gesture. Neither of them seemed to be prepared to move anytime soon.

Hitch left before they could notice him (although it didn’t look like they were going to) and instead went back to washing dishes. After a few minutes, somebody in the living room turned the television volume back to normal levels. The voices of the characters on the comedy show were quickly joined by those of Ruby and Clancy, who provided a range of high-spirited commentary and criticisms directed towards the show and life in general. Within seconds, things were back to normal.

* * *

 

As per regular Spectrum protocol, Hitch wasn’t actually called into the hearing until about midway through, when he was scheduled to stand as a witness. He entered the auditorium, which had been repurposed as a makeshift courtroom, to see about twenty officials from Spectrum One seated in the audience, talking lowly amongst each other. Another official, seated onstage was making notes on a clipboard, biting his lip and seeming distracted, and yet another was staring at the ceiling, waiting for her job to begin. Opposite them, LB was also seated, looking completely in-control of the situation despite the fact that she was handcuffed to her chair. Hitch doubted that the handcuffs were necessary – he couldn’t see LB trying to escape, it just wasn’t her style.

It was somewhat strange, seeing LB bound and subdued on the same platform that she had often used for briefings and speeches. When talking, she tended to move around a lot, and never once did sit down. It seemed wrong, somehow.

Upon seeing Hitch, she inclined her head at him slightly – acknowledging his presence- but said nothing. Hitch nodded back, but it was curt.

It took a moment or two for the officials onstage to see Hitch, but when they did, the man tapped the base of his clipboard on the small desk in front of him. “The hearing is now back in session. Settle yourselves.” His voice was nasal and his tone was clipped.

The murmurings of the assembled audience subsided quickly, and soon everyone was quiet and staring expectantly at the stage. The woman opposite LB gestured at Hitch to join them onstage.

“Recommencement of the disciplinary hearing of Loveday Byrd Uggerlimb,” one of the officials recited as Hitch walked up to stand on the edge of the stage. LB visibly flinched at her full name. “Guilty of crimes against state and country. Presiding officials, Johnson Magnussen and Cleo Chang. Spectrum One in jury. Third witness…” He glanced down, shuffling his papers. “…Art Hitchen Zachary.”

Now it was Hitch’s turn to flinch. “Present,” he said shortly.

“We’re just going to ask some questions, by the way,” added the woman on stage – Cleo Chang, apparently – with a soft smile. “Nothing to be worried about, I promise.”

Hitch nodded.

“Excellent,” Chang said, and Hitch decided that he didn’t like her. She was acting very kind and reasonable, but there was an underlying, patronizing edge to her words that he really didn’t like. “If you wouldn’t mind starting by stating your full name and position in this organization.”

“Art Hitchen Zachary, field agent,” he said, “currently working undercover as protection for a younger agent.”

“That younger agent,” said the man – Magnussen. “She wouldn’t happen to be the Redfort girl?”

“That’s her,” Hitch said. Even though he hadn’t looked at LB since he stepped onto the stage, he could still feel her eyes on the back of his neck.

“One of the youngest to ever join our ranks in the last decade, I believe,” mused Magnussen, scribbling a note down on his clipboard. “Remind me – how old is she?”

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen. Yes, I thought so.” He wrote down something else.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Chang, folding her arms, “but we terminated the Larva programme more than two decades ago. No more children were meant to be indoctrinated into Spectrum. I believe we concluded that it was dangerous and unethical.”

“I remember,” said Hitch, maybe a bit more testily than he would have liked. “I was a former member of the programme, after all.”

“Hm, yes,” agreed Chang, tapping her fingernails to her lips. “And what do you, a former survivor – sorry, graduate – of the Larva training programme, have to say about the fact that a teenage girl was allowed to go through the frankly ridiculous amounts of training that even some adults have difficulty keeping up with. I would have thought that after your, ah,” she looked down at a clipboard of her own, “ _difficulties_ with training at an early age would have made you violently opposed to this.”

 _She’s got my file,_ Hitch realized, and tried not to react. “I thought at the time – and I still do think – that Ruby is a supremely capable girl, who could more than adequately keep up with the challenges that training would present.”

“I see,” said Magnussen. “You don’t believe that Spectrum was at fault for hiring her?”

 _This isn’t even good cop, bad cop,_ muttered an imaginary Ruby, who in his mind was seated on one of the unoccupied seats in the front row, looking thoroughly unamused. _What are they trying to do- bad cop, bad cop? Dumb cop, dumber cop?_

 _It seems like good bureaucrat, bad bureaucrat,_ he thought in response. _Not that there’s much difference between a good and a bad bureaucrat to begin with._

“I think that they – that _we_ – could have done a lot worse,” Hitch said aloud. “Ruby’s been essential for a lot of the progress that Spectrum 8 has made in the last year. Without her, I believe that we might not even exist anymore. No, I don’t think Spectrum was at fault,” he added, clarifying. “I don’t think anybody was, it was a good decision.”

“Even though the Larva programme had been cancelled permanently?” Chang asked, eyebrows raising. “Again, I stress the words – dangerous and unethical.”

“Redfort was never part of the Larva initiative,” said LB, speaking for the first time. All eyes went to her immediately. Even handcuffed to a chair, she still held a distinct kind of authority that was hard to ignore. “I hired her completely separately from that, on the basis that she was an intelligent code breaker that had the skills we needed. Her job was originally set out to be completely desk work. The agent part of it came afterwards.”

Hitch nodded. “What she said.”

“To reiterate,” Chang said after making a note. “You believe that LB was of sound mind when making the decision to hire Ruby Redfort?”

Hitch seriously considered this question. It was a valid one, and it took a few moments to think through in its entirety.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “I think she was.”

A murmur went through the assembled officials, and there was a lull in the proceedings while both of the Spectrum One agents on stage made more notes. Hitch glanced over, and noticed that LB was wearing shoes – shiny black dress boots that looked like they had never been used at all before. They probably hadn’t, come to think of it. Hitch had never seen LB wearing any sort of footwear within the confines of Spectrum HQ.

“Okay,” said Magnussen, placing aside his clipboard fully. “If you would do your best to recount the events directly following Miss Redfort’s disappearance in full–?”

Hitch nodded, and began to speak.

It took a while to summarize the entirety of the entire situation that had happened in the past few days, but he did get through all of it eventually. Everything – from his discovery of Ruby’s disappearance to the process they had gone through to find Room 0, and all the way up to finding her. The only bit he omitted was Clancy’s involvement, ever so slight as it may have been. He was doing his best to remain completely honest for the sake of the investigation, but there were some secrets he was going to keep, no matter how open he was being.

After he had finished, there was a short recess as the officials from Spectrum One talked this all over, and discussed every bit of it to death.

“Based on what you said, and the files that we were given,” said Magnussen after this was finished, “it seems that Miss Redfort was found to have shot Bradley Baker in cold blood at the conclusion of the investigation into her disappearance. This proved to be fatal. Is this true?”

Hitch was momentarily lost for words. This was fundamentally true, of course – excluding the part about ‘cold blood’– but... “you know, the way you phrase that makes it seem like you think she’s some sort of psychopath.”

“I’m not doing anything like that,” said Magnussen, utterly calm. “Answer the question.”

“Yes, she shot Bradley Baker, otherwise known as the Count Von Viscount,” said Hitch evenly. “Yes, it was fatal, and he was dead before we even got there. _No,_ it was not in cold blood.”

“All Spectrum agents are subject to state laws regarding manslaughter,” Chang began.

“She is a _thirteen year old girl!_ ” Hitch snapped, cutting her off. “And this was the man who had on multiple occasions tried to kill _her_ in cold blood! Even if she was a _full_ agent, she would be entirely justified in–”

The heel of LB’s boot clicked sharply against the leg of the chair she was sitting on, and Hitch fell silent momentarily. It was instinct, more than anything else, a signal they had developed long ago for keeping quiet in dangerous situations. He wasn’t even sure why he was listening to her, and yet…

“Forgive me if I’m wrong,” said LB, sounding measured and reasonable. “But just a moment ago, you were debating Redfort’s status as a member of Spectrum. I believe the words you used were ‘dangerous’ and ‘unethical’.” Her eyes narrowed. “And now you’re proposing to treat her as if she were a fully-fledged agent nearly twice her age?”

There was a very uncomfortable silence.

“The accused interjecting during martial proceedings is in direct violation of the regulations,” Magnussen said, sounding as if he were reciting from a handbook. “You may be held in contempt of court–”

“We’re not _in_ a court, Johnson,” LB said, clearly exasperated. “And I’m hardly ‘the accused’ if all you’re going to do is dissect the motives of a teenage girl and ignore my presence constantly.”

“It’s important for the nature of the case,” Chang said stiffly. “We need to know all angles of the situation before we can come to a final verdict.”

“You haven’t made direct reference to LB in nearly half an hour,” Hitch said. “Just who are you supposed to be putting on trial here – her or Ruby?”

There was another uncomfortable silence, and then LB said, “ _ah,_ I think I get it. You’re trying to pin down every thing I’ve ever done wrong in my history as leader as Spectrum Eight, aren’t you? Hoping you’ll be able to keep me locked away forever, no doubt.” Her gaze passed over Chang and Magnussen, rested briefly on Hitch, and then went out to scan the audience in the auditorium. Some people made eye contact with her. The vast majority looked away, unwilling to meet her gaze. “Rest assured, you’ll find plenty of things in my history that’ll get that accomplished. But let me make one thing crystal clear: Redfort is not one of those things. She has done nothing wrong in this situation. She was an innocent party that got involved in something she shouldn’t have, through no fault of her own.”

The silence this time stretched on for several minutes, and then Chang cleared her throat and nodded at Hitch. “Agent, you’re dismissed.”

“I have a request,” he said instead of leaving.

“Yes?” Magnussen said, looking annoyed.

“I want to talk to LB after the hearing.”

He looked like he was going to argue this for a moment, but then he sighed. “I’ll get somebody to notify you when it concludes. You may speak with her then.”

Hitch nodded and left the auditorium quickly, without another glance at LB or anybody else there.

It wasn’t entirely accurate to say that Ruby had done _nothing_ wrong, but she certainly wasn’t the villain in this situation. Despite everything, Hitch was beginning to hope that LB would receive a favourable outcome in the entire messed-up situation, although that was a very narrow hope. Even though she evidently had most people’s best interests at heart, the fact remained that ‘most people’ had, up until very recently, included the Count von Viscount.


	20. Chapter 15: Tuesday (2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for discussion of emotional manipulation!

Due to a lack of anything better to do, and the fact that noon had passed while he was in the hearing, Hitch headed to the Spectrum canteen to wait out the session’s conclusion. He ordered a cup of coffee and a salad, and while waiting for the coffee to brew, spotted Blacker, who was apparently having lunch at the same time as him.

Now fully equipped with coffee and food, he went over to join the other agent at his table. Blacker waved a hand in greeting. “Hey. Some day, huh?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” said Hitch, and started on his salad.

“I heard you had to testify,” said Blacker, setting aside the small chalkboard he had been working on before Hitch’s arrival. “How did that go?”

“I don’t know if what I said changed anything,” he admitted. “They seemed to be pretty set on their conclusion before I even stepped in there.”

“And that conclusion would be?”

“That LB’s the root of all evil, and Ruby’s existence in general was and still is a mistake.”

Blacker winced. “That bad, huh.”

“Well, the climax of the entire situation was probably the point where they accused Ruby of third-degree murder. Things kind of went downhill from there.” Blacker was looking more than slightly curious, so Hitch elaborated. “LB called them out on it, pointed out how hypocritical they were being, and drew the attention of the trial back to her.”

“That was nice of her.” Blacker took a sip of his iced tea. “I still find it kind of hard to believe that she was protecting the Count – it’s one thing to see your boss being taken away in handcuffs, I had just about accepted it at that point, but now she’s turning around and doing stuff like  _ this – _ it just feels weird, you know?”

“I guess now that Baker’s gone, her loyalties are focused on Spectrum entirely,” Hitch speculated. “Although–” he frowned, as something occurred to him. “You know, it strikes me as a little weird that she’s risking the fate of the trial to protect Ruby.”

“I always thought she was a little fond of Ruby, so I don’t think it’s  _ that _ surprising. Didn’t she always want to have kids?” Blacker asked.

Hitch paused, staring at him in slight bemusement. “Sure, before the plane crash,” he said slowly, “but that’s not the point.”

“Okay, then what is?”

“Ruby was the one who shot and killed Bradley Baker. If you were in LB’s place, can you really see yourself defending the person who had done that to the love of your life?”

“When you put it like that…” Blacker trailed off. “Yeah, that does  _ not  _ seem in character for her at all.”

They sat in silence for a while. Hitch finished his salad, and then pushed the empty tray aside.

“Oh, hey, speaking of which,” said Blacker, sitting up straighter. “They conducted the autopsy on the Count – Baker – well, whoever. The report’s been made clearance-only, but you should have access. Look at it when you have time.”

“Anything interesting?” Hitch asked.

“Not especially – but several things were found on his person at the time of death.” He pulled out a handwritten list from his pocket, and handed it to Hitch.

Hitch read down the list and looked up. “The octopus ink, the cyan scent, the eight key. We have them now?”

“Yep,” Blacker confirmed. “All locked away in a  _ very  _ high-security vault – but it’s not like he’ll be coming to get them back, anyway.”

“Well, that’s something, at least.” He read it again. “So, he was carrying them with him? Why would he need any of them on hand?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Blacker sighed. “I’ll get back to you if there’s any updates, but we’re not getting too far at the moment. Everything’s kind of in disarray, what with – well, you know.”

“I do,” Hitch agreed, and his watch beeped. He looked down- it was a notification from Buzz. Apparently the hearing was over. He could now talk to LB. “Not that it hasn’t been nice talking, but I’ve gotta go.”

“See you, then,” Blacker said easily, picking up his chalkboard again. “Oh, and – tell Ruby that she’s welcome in the code department anytime. Even if there’s not a case or anything on. Everybody likes her down there, we’re happy from the company. We can try to crack the D’Agapeyeff Cipher or something, I don’t know.”

“I’ll pass it on,” he said, and left the canteen.

* * *

 

LB was waiting in one of the holding rooms in the grainier silver sections of the headquarters. She was no longer handcuffed, but remained seated as Hitch entered the room.

“I suspect you have a lot of questions,” she said with a twisted sort of smile as he sat down opposite her.

“You got that right,” Hitch said.

“I’ll do my best to remain transparent for your sake, but–” she glanced up at the ceiling meaningfully, where a hidden camera and microphone no doubt were situated. “– I may not be able to tell you  _ everything _ .”

“I can work with that,” he said, and frowned. “Okay, how about we start at the beginning. How and why did Bradley end up becoming – well, that?”

LB laughed, and it was more than a little cold. “I thought you were coming to talk to me as a friend, not an interrogator. I’ve got to say, I’m disappointed.”

**HITCH:** Friend, huh?

**LB:** Good point. Well, former colleague, if nothing else.

**HITCH:** I’m not the one who decided to betray us and everything we’ve ever stood for. And I didn’t come here on an official basis.

**LB:** So why the probing questions?

**HITCH:** I’d rather find out everything from you direct than read it in an official report two months from now.

She didn’t speak for a while.

**LB:** That… is entirely fair. I respect that. In response to your question – I don’t entirely know for sure how he got to that point.

**HITCH:** What do you mean?

**LB:** I don’t know as much about the situation as you seem to think I do. I was only a co-conspirator, if you really want to put it that way, an accomplice in hiding the Count’s true identity. I suspect that Bradley took on the persona of the Count several months before he reported to survive an encounter with him, but the truth is that we can’t really be sure. For all I know, there was never such person as Bradley Baker.

**HITCH:** But we knew him since...

**LB:** Since Larva, yes, I know.

“That can’t be right,” said Hitch. “I knew him back then, he was a good kid – a little prideful, maybe, but he saved my life.”

“He was a very talented deceptor later on, as it turned out. It’s impossible to tell if that was recent, or...” And LB frowned. “In retrospect, I don’t think any of us really knew him.”

“The Count was killing agents off for more than a year before Baker claimed to encounter him,” Hitch said, remembering this snippet of information rather suddenly.

“I have two theories on that,” LB said, “if you want to hear them, that is?”

**HITCH:** I’ve always valued your opinion, you know that.

**LB:** All right. Theory number one. The deaths that we attributed to the Count before Bradl – before Baker supposedly encountered him were caused by other sources.

**HITCH:** That makes sense, I guess – didn’t we attribute them to him after the fact?

**LB:** Exactly. Until Baker, nobody had survived an encounter, so we had no conclusive evidence for the deaths. We just chalked it up to the Count because it made sense at the time, and there wasn’t anything to contradict it.

**HITCH:** So your theory is that a lot of the Count-caused deaths weren’t actually his fault at all – they were just coincidences that happened to contribute to his reputation.

**LB:** Yes.

**HITCH:** It sounds plausible, actually. You didn’t happen to confirm this with Baker when you two were – meeting up, or whatever it was you were doing together?

There was a dead, heavy silence for a few seconds.

**LB:** That sort of thing didn’t really come up.

**HITCH:** No, I didn’t think it would have.

**LB:** To be honest, it was mostly heavy-handed emotional manipulation and blackmail on his part and a disgusting show of weak will from me that kept our relationship and the façade going all these years.

Another silence, but different this time.

**HITCH:** Jesus. LB, I’m –

**LB:** Please don’t. I don’t want your sympathy, especially not now.

**HITCH:** You should have said something.

**LB:** Maybe.

**HITCH:** I could have done something.

**“** You couldn’t have, but it’s a nice thought,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table. “This situation was almost entirely my own fault, though,” she added after a second. “It’s a good thing I’m no longer head of Spectrum – that sort of weakness is definitely not something you want to see in a leader.”

“LB,” said Hitch, unsure of what to say.

“My second theory,” she said sharply. “Do you want to hear it or not? Because I really don’t have the patience for this conversation if all you want to do is talk about the past.”

Hitch stared at her for a moment, and then nodded. She released a long sigh of breath, apparently relieved. “Right, then. Theory number two. Remember how I mentioned that Bradley Baker may have never existed?”

“Are you suggesting that it was a false name, that he was somebody else entirely?”

“Yes, but that wasn’t exactly the point I was trying to make. I believe…” She stopped, and then started again. “I think it  _ might be a possibility _ that the Count’s been around longer than we ever thought he was.”

“Explain,” said Hitch shortly.

LB spread her hands out wide in front of her; a magician presenting her next trick. “If you dig deep enough into classified records, you begin to notice patterns. As far as Spectrum’s been around, there’s been evidence of a man following the Count’s methods and mannerisms, practicing his work. He was only labelled as ‘Von Viscount’ very recently, as far as I can tell.”

Hitch frowned. “What, so Bradley Baker… was just the latest iteration of the person we knew as the Count?”

“It’s just a theory,” LB said.

“But it does make a lot of sense,” Hitch admitted. “So, if we assume that the Count has been passing off his title, his ‘job’ onto the next candidate, Dread Pirate Roberts style…”

“We can probably also assume that the original Count Von Viscount has been retired for several decades now and is living like a king in Patagonia,” LB said dryly. “Although that’s only a guess. It’s also possible that he got murdered by his successor, which would also make a lot of sense when you consider how the Count usually operates.”

“This is a lot to take in,” Hitch admitted, sitting back. “Do you have anything to back it up?”

“Apart from some research, everything I’ve got is pretty much circumstantial,” LB said, offering up a single shrug. “Br – the Count never confirmed it. Like I said, we didn’t talk much apart from what he considered strictly necessary. But…”

And here she paused, and Hitch leaned forwards again, deeply interested. “But what?”

“He did let drop a few things,” LB admitted. “And they fit into my second theory pretty well.”

“Things, like–?”

“Well, he was ultimately gunning for immortality. That much was  _ abundantly  _ obvious.”

Hitch was silent for a few seconds, waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, he said carefully, “immortality? As in...”

“As in, live forever, never die, never grow old. That sort of immortality, yes.” LB sighed. “To be honest, I thought it was crazy talk at the time. I still do, really. But he certainly seemed convinced.”

“How would he even have accomplished something like that?” Hitch wondered aloud, and then looked at LB. “Did he–?”

“Never said. Another guess, though – it probably had something to do with the items he stole.”

“The ink, the cyan scent, the eight- key,” Hitch muttered.

“Exactly.” LB folded her arms, placing them on the table on front of her. “That’s all I have, by the way. Feel free to release this information to Spectrum in general if you want. I certainly don’t have any more use for it.”

“I’ve still got questions,” Hitch said.

**LB:** By all means, fire away.

**HITCH:** Why defend Ruby?

**LB:** Are you objecting?

**HITCH:** Definitely not. I think it was the right move to make, but I just don’t get  _ why _ you did it.

**LB:** What, you mean because she shot and murdered my now ex-boyfriend?

“That wasn’t murder,” said Hitch sharply, “it was self-defence.”

LB coughed, and maybe looked a bit embarrassed. “You’re right, that was in poor taste.” She looked at Hitch seriously. “I don’t hold any grudges towards her. She did what she thought was right, and in retrospect I think it was the right thing for her to do as well.”

Hitch nodded.

“And besides,” LB continued, “I am a terrible, awful person who has made many mistakes, but I’m not  _ quite  _ awful enough to condemn a teenage girl for acting in pure self-defence.”

“If it helps, she entered his hideout with good intentions.”

LB nodded after a second. “In that case, I only regret that the situation didn’t play out better.”

“I think we all do,” Hitch said, “especially the Count.”

He was expecting LB to react badly to that, but she actually laughed – a proper, amused laugh. “That’s probably true.”

Hitch was smiling as well. “Okay,” he said, “but one last question.”

“Yes?” LB’s smile dropped off her face.

“Why?” Hitch said. “If he was awful and manipulative and terrible to you, and you were gaining nothing from the situation, why did you do it? Why stay with him, why hide everything from Spectrum?”

This silence was longer than any before.

“I thought I loved him,” LB said, eventually – tone solemn. “And I thought he loved me back. Maybe I was wrong on both counts, but that doesn’t change what I did.”

“I see,” said Hitch.

LB looked him dead in the eye. “We do terrible things in the name of love, my friend,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I think that’s true.”


	21. Chapter 16: Tuesday (3)

When Hitch looked into Ruby’s bedroom through an open door that evening, he experienced a brief moment of complete and utter panic when he saw the window wide open and no trace of Ruby in sight. It was only when he heard the shifting of tiles on the roof above that he realized she hadn’t probably gone off to kill a psychopath again, and had just decided to take the most direct route up to the top of the house – namely, through her bedroom window.

He grabbed the blanket that had been folded neatly on the end of her bed, and headed up to the more sensible means of roof access – the ladder leading up to the locked hatch in the centre of the second floor.

He cracked open the roof access hatch very slowly, and glanced through the gap to see what was happening.

Ruby was seated on the highest part of the roof with her knees up to her chest and her hair falling down in a tangled mess down her back. She was wearing a loose, worn jumper, and was staring up at the stars like they held the answers to all of her problems. Her glasses weren’t on, and it didn’t look like she had her contact lenses in either.

Hitch pushed open the hatch fully, and emerged up onto the roof. He didn’t miss Ruby’s tiny flinch as his shoes made contact with the tiles, and how her hands bunched up in her jumper tightly. He pretended to, though, and cleared his throat as if making his presence known for the first time.

“Got you something,” he said, tossing the blanket at her. She ducked, reaching out an arm blindly in order to knock it out of the air and to her feet.

She stared at it blankly for a second.

“It’s cold tonight,” he said by way of explanation, and closed the hatch, sitting down on top of it.

“Thanks,” she said, shaking out the blanket and draping it over her knees. She took several moments to tuck the edges in around her feet, creating a sort of impromptu cocoon.

“Blacker says hi,” Hitch offered. “He also said you could stop by anytime. Something about a D’Aga-something Cipher.”

“D’Agapeyeff,” Ruby corrected, after a moment of thought, and then she laughed. “Yeah, probably not. Experts have been working on that one for years.”

“Well, if anyone can work it out, I think it’d be you, kid.”

Ruby smiled – soft and self-deprecating, completely unlike her. “We’ll see, I guess.”

Hitch glanced over at her, but the sky was quickly clouding over, and the light from the moon and stars was fading. Her face was wreathed in shadow – it was impossible to read what she was thinking.

“So, LB got fired,” he said conversationally, turning to regard the empty streets below them.

“Inevitable,” said Ruby, echoing their earlier conversation with Clancy. “Wait, but – what’s going to happen to her?”

“She’ll probably be handed off to Spectrum Nine,” said Hitch, folding his arms and leaning back. “They usually handle that side of the justice system when it comes to Spectrum. Otherwise, well, she’ll end up in a state penitentiary.”

Ruby’s mouth moved silently for a second, and then she closed it. “That’s- well. No. She doesn’t deserve that.”

“No,” said Hitch. “She really doesn’t. But there’s nothing anybody can do about it now.”

A gust of wind coasted across the rooftop, and Ruby pulled the blanket from her knees, opting instead to drape it around her shoulders, like a cape.

“On a  _ slightly _ lighter note,” Hitch added. “We’ve got a new head of Spectrum Eight now.”

“So quickly?” Ruby asked. “Who is it?”

“Froghorn,” said Hitch.

There was a  _ very  _ long silence.

“You’re joking, right.” Ruby’s voice was flat, completely deadpan. “Because that isn’t a lighter topic, that’s a  _ travesty _ .”

Hitch shrugged, although it was unlikely that Ruby could actually see him in the dark. “I figured it was just ridiculous enough for you to appreciate it.”

“ _ Ridiculous  _ is definitely the right word. Who had the bright idea of hiring  _ Froghorn? _ ” She pronounced the usually-silent G with a large amount of derision. Hitch got the impression that she was overreacting to this news on purpose, to try to restore some semblance of normalcy into her life.

**HITCH:** If you don’t like that, you’re probably not going to enjoy the other news I’ve got for you.

**RUBY:** Oh jeez – okay, what is it?

**HITCH:** As of half an hour ago, you’ve been fired.

Ruby bounced the heels of her feet against the tiles of the roof. “Froghorn?” she asked after a second, sounding as if she already knew the answer.

**HITCH:** Yep. He’s doing an entire organizational overhaul, to try to weed out any other betrayers.

**RUBY:** But they caught the mole already – it was LB, wasn’t it?

**HITCH:** Yep, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any other moles.

“That’s all fine and good,” said Ruby, a touch indignantly, “but  _ me?  _ A mole? Has he been living under a rock for the last year or  _ what? _ ”

“You can’t ever be too careful,” said Hitch, trying to sound serious, but quickly dropped the pretence, letting out a quick shrug and an incredulous laugh. “But yeah. That was about my reaction too.”

They sat in the darkness for a while, united in their mutual annoyance towards Miles Froghorn, and then Ruby let out a huffing sort of sigh. “Probably for the best, to be honest. I don’t think I could handle training at this point.”

“What, you’re not mourning the loss of your paycheck?” Hitch asked, only half-joking.

“Hard to miss something you never had in the first place,” pointed out Ruby.

Hitch laughed, and then went serious. “Really though – are you sure? I could probably pull a few strings, get you back into the programme. Froghorn had no real reason to kick you out- Blacker could easily talk him back into hiring you.”

“Nah,” said Ruby without even pausing to consider it. “I think I’m good.” She could evidently sense his sceptical look even in the darkness, because she immediately continued, saying, “listen, I flinch when somebody opens a  _ door _ too loudly. A freaking  _ door. _ How am I supposed to get training done when I can’t even walk through my own house without feeling anxious?”

“I would have predicted that you’d just go ahead and power through with it anyway,” Hitch noted, almost to himself.

“A week ago, I would have agreed, but,” Ruby shrugged, the movement almost over-exaggerated. “I dunno. Maybe I could go back to code-breaking in a month or two, but- not field work. Not now.”

“Whatever makes you feel comfortable,” said Hitch.

Ruby hummed an affirmative, then made a small noise of confused realization. “Wait, but – if I’m fired, what are you still doing here?”

“Mrs Digby isn’t back ‘till Friday,” he said. “And your parents aren’t back in Town until Sunday, at the least. What am I supposed to do, just leave you here?”

“You know what I mean, come on,” she said, the auditory equivalent of an eye roll.

Hitch sighed. “I’m still on protection duty for you.”

“Me?” Ruby sounded almost startled.

“Yeah – the Count might be gone, but there’s a whole lot of nasty people out there that might want you dead or gone. We went to all that effort to get you back, kid – we’re not gonna have Lorelei Von Leyden wrecking a perfect record,” he said. “Just don’t go wandering off.”

“Not likely,” Ruby retorted, and then more silence. “Huh – you must hate that. You’re always being demoted to the bodyguard, aren’t you?”

“I thought that when I was first placed here, too,” said Hitch honestly. “But it’s actually not so bad.”

Ruby didn’t say anything for several minutes, and then she yelped in shock, very suddenly. Hitch stood up, searching for danger. “What? What is it?”

“Just a snowflake,” said Ruby, sounding annoyed at herself. She pulled at her hair. “Darn it- sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. Just was surprised, is all.” She shook her head, and then suddenly stared up at the sky, looking delighted. “Hey – it’s snowing!”

“Well, it  _ is _ December.” Hitch sat back down, and leaned back a bit so he could look up at the sky. Pellets of snow were spiralling down – only a sprinkling at the moment, but he could see that the intensity of the snowfall was going to pick up quickly. The moon had emerged from behind a cloud, casting everything in a dim silvery light. “Looks like it’s gonna be a white Christmas.”

Ruby continued brushing snowflakes away as they started to collect in her hair and on her shoulders. “I’m gonna  _ trash  _ Del in the street snowball fight this year,” she said, sounding determined.

“Not on a twisted ankle, you’re not,” Hitch reminded her. “Wait a few weeks until you can walk without limping.” He winced, and shook his head – snow was beginning to collect in his hair as well. “We should probably go inside.”

“Aw, come on.” It sounded as if Ruby was pouting. “This is the best part of sitting on the roof, man.”

“Look, if you  _ want  _ to get buried in a pile of snow, that’s fine by me.”

“Might be nice,” said Ruby, and then started searching in the pockets of her jeans, shifting on top of the roof, which was gradually becoming covered with frozen ice. “Actually – hang on, I got a thing for this.”

“A thing,” said Hitch without inflection, and watched as Ruby pulled out a small metal cylinder, which she twisted in her hands. It telescoped out into a pole that was roughly three times longer than when it started. “Is that a Spectrum gadget?” he asked, more amused than irritated at this point.

“Maybe,” Ruby said evasive, running her hands up and down the side of the pole. She located a button set into the side, and held it down for a few seconds. The pole promptly began to emit a low-pitched noise that began increasing steadily in pitch. Within seconds, the sound resembled a cat dragging its claws down a chalkboard, and both occupants of the roof were visibly wincing. But within seconds, that sound was gone – the pitch having reached the upper range of human hearing.

Ruby pointed the pole upwards towards the oncoming snow, and a strange thing began to happen. Even as the falling snow approached, it seemed to hit an invisible barrier just at the tip of the pole, extending for a few metres. Upon hitting the barrier, the snow either bounced off, cascading around Ruby in a gentle shower, or just melted. It was, in effect, an invisible umbrella.

She stood there for a few moments, apparently relishing the feeling of wielding an imperceptible shield against the weather, and then sat down, still holding the pole up so it prevented the snow from touching her.

“That’s the Sonic Umbrella, huh,” Hitch said, still getting covered in snow. “You do know, I need to return that.”

“Mm.” Ruby twisted something else on the pole. It hummed faintly, and the diameter of the shield increased, so it covered Hitch as well. “Maybe tomorrow.”

The world beyond the roof was already half-covered in a sizable amount of snow. By tomorrow, most houses on the block would be blanketed in white. The falling snow was strangely peaceful, and the wind had died down.

The world was silent.

“Hey, kid,” said Hitch after a while.

Ruby glanced over at him with an expression that read  _ what  _ all over her face.

“You did good, you know,” he told her. “Even if it doesn’t seem like that, you did a real good job. Don’t forget that.”

She made a derisive noise, but at least didn’t contradict him out loud.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud again, leaving nothing but silence and the sound of falling snow.

* * *

 

**end**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deepest and most heartfelt thanks go out to @goldstarsforall on tumblr, an incredible beta who helped me pull this mess together, R and Annie and Ace for general encouragement, and finally - you guys. Because you’re awesome and incredible and your comments and screaming never failed to brighten up my day. 
> 
> Thank you for joining me on this adventure, and hopefully there will be many more to come. Merry Christmas!


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